In February 2003 the HE Faculty at City College Norwich began a qualitative research project to examine the HE Student experience within the college.  This is the final report for this research project and presents the emergent themes from an analysis of a series of twenty focus groups conducted with HE Students at City College Norwich.  From these, themes, key issues and recommendations are identified and presented with a view to offering guidance for work leading to an improved overall college experience for potential and current HE Students. 
The rapid expansion and diversification of Higher Education, with better access for wider social groups, is now major government policy.  The government has set a challenging target that by 2010, 50% of those aged between 18 and 30 will have had the opportunity to participate in Higher Education.  The strategies for increasing and widening participation in Higher Education include the introduction of Foundation Degrees, the first major element in a new approach to vocational education and vocational pathways into higher education.  It is argued that this increase in numbers of students undertaking Higher Education cannot happen without a greater involvement of further education institutions in the delivery of a wider range of qualifications that are locally available.
In the course of discussions concerning the further development of an HE strategy for City College Norwich, the Senior Management Team and the HE Faculty agreed that there was need for research to examine the current HE student experience at City College.  This research would then be used in the development of the HE strategy and action plan.
This research is qualitative in approach, the purpose of using this approach is to “illuminate” the attitudes and perceptions of HE students with particular respect to their experiences of studying at City College.  It is constrained by the nature and the depth of its methodology and accepts from the perspective of the reader there may omissions or oversights of detail.  It hopes however that what it provides is the beginnings of a fair and balanced portrait of the life of a HE Student during their period of study at City College.  It is anticipated that these findings may have the potential to be used to initiate further systematic research and to develop instruments for the measurement of service quality.

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