The notion of lifelong learning has become a mantra within educational policies. However these have been strongly critiqued for reflecting an understanding of learning that privileges the economic benefits of participation in formal education. In UK contexts, the importance attached to widening participation in higher education is one manifestation of these policy discourses, which can be interrogated as a form of governmentality. This paper draws upon a recent small-scale mixed-method study of different vocational learners' transition from Level 3 courses to consider how these policy discourses are being mediated by "learners" who were qualified to enter higher education, but decided instead on alternative life courses. The analysis suggests that policy constructions of participation in higher education sit at a disjuncture with respondents' longer-term experiences of institutionalised education processes. In other ways, lifelong learning seemed to be willingly embraced in respondents' different commitments to learning and self-development, although higher education institutions were not often seen as a source of this learning. The article aims all the same to allow this interpretation of respondents' voices to speak back and disrupt policy mantras.