Local students in higher education cold spots: placed possible selves and college-based higher education

This thesis explores experiences of college-based higher education (CBHE) in England, positioning this type of provision within the national and local geographies of English higher education. Focusing on institutions located in higher education ‘cold spots’, the thesis situates these institutions within local and policy narratives of both lack of and need for educational opportunity. The case study research design examines two case institutions, and involves documentary analysis and interviews with higher education directors, tutors and final year students on two degree courses in each college, as well as interviews with key figures in national Further Education policy. Data analysis deploys the concept of possible selves in an original, sociologically-oriented dialogue with de Certeau’s ‘spatial story’ to produce accounts of placed possible selves. The key contributions of the thesis are, firstly, that shared and homogenous societal narratives of university higher education dominate even in places and for educational subjects without university education. Secondly, the thesis challenges reductive binary understandings of student mobilities, in which mobility and privilege are diametrically opposed to immobility and disadvantage. Finally, the concept of local capital offers a way of understanding social, cultural and economic commitments to place that moves beyond a language of deficit.