Transitions within transitions: Supporting students, and ourselves, through change in higher education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56433/qn9f5732Keywords:
Transition, transition models, iterative design, higher education crisisAbstract
This vignette reflects on over a decade of professional engagement with student transition into UK higher education, drawing on varied roles as a lecturer, Access and Foundation tutor, and Learning Development manager. Across these contexts, I have designed and delivered pre-arrival and first-year transition programmes and built teams and services aimed at easing students into and through university life - particularly those from ‘at-risk’ groups - by building engagement, confidence, belonging, and academic literacy. Yet while supporting student transitions has remained central to my practice, my roles, and the institutional and sectoral landscapes in which my work takes place have themselves undergone profound transitions.
Current conditions in UK higher education, including widespread financial deficits, course closures, and departmental restructures (HEPI, 2025), demand reflection on how we design and sustain transition support. As I argued at the 2025 EFYE conference, the act of supporting transition must itself be understood as a transitional, iterative process. Programmes cannot be static or universal. They must remain sensitive to shifting contexts, student identities, and the evolving institutional cultures in which they are embedded.
This discussion explores how transition support can respond dynamically to both student needs and sectoral uncertainty. It highlights the value of collective, comparative, and compassionate approaches that reject deficit framings of students and instead foreground transition as a shared experience for students, staff, and institutions alike. Making transition visible through theoretical models (e.g. Schlossberg, Bridges, Kubler-Ross) can legitimise emotional and cognitive shifts, and foster resilience. Ultimately, raising awareness of transition and its psychological impact may be the most powerful support we can offer in an uncertain higher education landscape.
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