This may require academic staff to adopt new approaches and new roles. However the development of lifelong learning resulting from the assistance given to students in their first year of study should be worth the effort. It has been common for the transition to university to be viewed as a temporary aberration associated with students beginning their tertiary career and referring to an initial period during which they may be confused, disorientated, and struggling to adjust to the process of beginning university study. It can be argued that such a view has considerable limitations.
Students beginning university study are likely to experience a wide range of problems.
As they try to desperately adjust, many are reluctant to make the effort to check, clarify or reduce the gaps in their knowledge and understanding. From the university s point of view, there is a perceived need to provide some means of assisting students during this transition and keeping them enrolled so that they will not withdraw before census funding dates. Thus one view is that both parties are involved in a survival process, one to adjust to a new and possibly different learning environment, the other to retain a source of funding.