Introduction to Higher Education

Universities are large and complex institutions. How your time is structured and the amount of direction you are given can be quite different from your previous educational experience.

One undergraduate student described her experience of the first few months of University in the following way:

"In the first year, you're literally sent off to a lecture theatre with a notepad and a pen, and told 'go and learn, go and learn, it'll be good', and you sort-of go, 'Right, ok'...It takes you a good three or four months to work something out".

Although this isn’t entirely typical, it does reflect a number of things that are central to any HE experience. Whether you are eighteen or eighty, attending University for the first time is a rite of passage that encourages you to engage with ideas and adopt behaviours that you might never have dreamed of, or dreamt possible for you. The transition to University life will change you as a person – this is all part of what is to be expected from higher education – but change can also be difficult to manage.

The resource links on the right will help you think about what you might reasonably expect from University and what Universities might reasonably expect from you.