his thesis explores the social functions and meanings of the UK's higher education system through a careful analysis of policy documents, existing scholarship and the life narratives of selected samples of people who have undergone higher education themselves. The theoretical framework is provided by Bourdieu and Foucault in an attempt to link individual experience with broader social formations. The debate around widening access and participation is explored with a view to detecting the implicit models deployed in the debate and the functions the higher education system is increasingly expected to undertake. The investigations reported here were prompted by a growing unease with much existing literature on access to higher education which has dealt with 'barriers' to participation, conceived of largely in terms of class, ethnicity and gender. Instead, the studies presented here explore the interaction between the 'field' and the 'habitus' in an attempt to characterise the matrix of shared meanings through which individual experience is linked to broader social structural factors. The findings are interpreted as revealing that class, race and gender barriers alone provide only a crude index of whether people participate advantageously in higher education and that instead it is necessary to consider a socially mediated suite of aspirations for which the term aspirational habitus is coined. This involves a rich seam of imagery which sustains the individual through the struggle to gain access to university and serves a protective role once entry has been achieved. It may involve a sense of one's history, or the values of the community or family, a sense that one is gaining qualifications on behalf of other family members who did not have the opportunity, and the sense that ones 'rightful place' may be one at a more elevated social level, acts as a powerful motivator. The implications of this for some of the recent changes to UK higher education policy and the effects of this are explored as part of a larger ongoing work on the evolution of contemporary higher education.