This paper addresses the issue of the impact of expansion and differentiation on widening access to higher education. In particular, it considers the impact of the growing importance of full-time short-cycle higher education in Scotland's colleges of further and higher education, the progression pathways which have now been established from these programmes to bachelor degrees in the Scottish universities and the policy initiatives to strengthen these pathways. It concludes that while these developments have helped promote inclusion, they have also resulted in some outcomes which can best be understood as diversion.