Mary Evans is Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury. She has written numerous books, including the acclaimed Simon de Beauvoir: A Feminist Mandarin.

• 1. Through the Looking Glass: Or what Pierre Bourdieu and Kingsley Amis have in common; 2. The Heart of Darkness: Audit and Compliance; 3. The Language of Learning; 4. Gendered Spaces; 5. Iron Cages; 6. Survival Strategies.

"'The more it costs, the less it's worth.' (Student slogan, London, 2003) 'We are told that this world represents our best hope for intellectual vitality and creativity. We are also told that we should pay more to enter it and experience its rich resources. Yet those rich resources are increasingly marginalized by cultures of assessment and regulation, the heavy costs of which (both financial and intellectual) are to be carried by students. Increasingly students are being asked to pay for the costs of the regulation of higher education rather than education itself. Access to Higher Education has become more widely available: the implications of that change are the concern of this book.' Mary Evans"