The ‘successful’ Arts student of the new millennium in Australia is likely to be female and studying full-time, having justcompleted her final year of schooling. Increasing numbers of students, however, are mature-age, are working long hours in paid employment, ormay be the first in their family to attend university. A significant proportion of this heterogeneous population may appear on campus only rarely. In order toengage the hearts and minds of thesestudents in their arts and humanities studies, it is necessary to (...) acknowledge such realities. Last century’s solutions to the ‘academic adjustment’ question will not hold. The new transition to study initiatives rely to an extent on differentiating between student groups to establish starting points, but must also find broad and stable ways of supporting the student cohort to make the transition successfully, particularly to the kinds of writingand thinking that characterize the individual disciplines. (shrink)

This article begins by showing that students’ failure to complete degree courses is an international problem. It suggests that a major cause of this is the lack of a planned transition between school and university. Using the teaching of English in British universities as a case study, it examines factors both within and beyond the academic discipline which contribute to the difficulty of making this transition. It concludes that greater efforts need to be made to liaise between the two sectors.

This article examines the teaching of Advanced level students in both years of their studies at two secondary schools in the Staffordshire area. The purpose of the investigation is to compare the tuition of A level students to the teaching of first year undergraduates at Keele University, specifically in relation to concerns raised by the undergraduates during the potentially disorientating period at the start of their degree studies. The question of whether there is a need to manage the students’ transition (...) to higher education more effectively is considered. (shrink)