The data stored includes: a) life-grids and transcripts from two hour semi-structured interviews pertaining to 98 students about their lives prior to university and their experience of university education and life in their first year (27=C, 23=D, 23=P, 25=S); b) transcripts relating to 31 of these students who became case study students and who were also interviewed about their second and third year education and experiences (6=C, 9=D, 9=P, 7=S); c) a survey of students from all three years of the degree with 769 returns from across the four institutions (210=C, 158=D, 163=P, 238=S) (48.5% 1st Year, 28.9% 2nd Year, 21.7% 3rd Year, .9% 4th Year); d) interviews with 12 seminar tutors who were interviewed about their teaching which was videoed (3=C, 3=D, 3=P, 3=S). Recent increases in the number of students attending universities appear to be accompanied by persistent inequities: poorer students go to less prestigious and well-resourced universities and, according to most league tables, receive a lower quality education. This project will question the assumption that education in higher status universities is necessarily better; and, will develop alternative definitions of 'quality' which allow that a university education is for personal growth and the public good, as well as for economic returns. The project will evaluate the comparative quality of teaching and learning in first degrees in sociology and allied subjects in four distinct universities by drawing on the work of the sociologist Basil Bernstein who argues that formal education disadvantages the already disadvantaged. By way of interviews with lecturers and students, case-studies, a survey, video-tapes of teaching, evaluation of student work and analysis of documents the research team will capture the relationship and interactions between students' lives and backgrounds; the degrees that they study; and the conditions in their universities. It is hoped that a better understanding of what should count as a good and just university education in different institutional settings will generate both debate and practical applications.

The data partially constituted case-studies investigating the quality of university education in four UK departments that taught sociology related social sciences. The departments were given pseudonyms to reflect their character and were invited to participate on the basis of their position in the UK league tables. The sociology departments at Community (C) and Diversity (D) were in the bottom quadrille of the four major UK league tables throughout the period of study (2008-2012) and Prestige (P) and Selective (S) were in the top quadrille. We aimed to collect comparable data sets in each institution but they vary according to the composition of the student body and the slight variance in the number of students we managed to gain access to in each institution. The students were all volunteers who responded to requests for participants. The samples matched the distribution of students in each institution by gender, age, ethnicity, disability and social class reasonably well but mature, male and students with declared disabilities were slightly over-represented. Teachers were also volunteers teaching the modules selected for study.