Widening Participation in Higher Education: Policy Regimes and Globalizing Discourses

In 1998 education was declared “the best economic policy that we have” (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1998) highlighting links between educational attainment and potential earning power. It was from this point on that widening participation became an integral part of what education policy was about. Importantly, alongside this notion comes the assumption that economic, social, political and cultural injustices can be solved through education and up skilling. Offered as an opinion piece, for work that is on-going and expanding, this paper critiques the use of the most salient educational economic driver of the last 20-25 years, namely widening participation. This paper argues that the consequences of widening participation in higher education have been concealment of continuing social divisions, largely because they have been underpinned by neo-liberal rhetoric. It suggests counter-action through transgressive learning and teaching practice towards a consequence of remaking higher education that works more effectively for the disenfranchised and marginalised.

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Neoliberal Meritocracy: How 'Widening Participation' to Universities in England Reinforces Class Divisions

Teachers – Being in Control or Being Controlled? - On Education. Journal for Research and Debate ◽

10.17899/on_ed.2021.10.8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (10) ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Cunningham ◽

Colin Samson

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Education Policy ◽

Social Mobility ◽

Higher Education Policy ◽

Service Providers ◽

Widening Participation ◽

Regulatory Frameworks ◽

The Social ◽

Class Privilege ◽

Class Divisions

This essay details the processes through which English universities reinforce existing social class divisions while at the same time extending access for populations that had historically been excluded from universities. Practices commonly referred to within higher education policy as ‘widening participation’ that purport to show solidarity with previously excluded student populations, we argue, function to maintain not diminish inequalities. While the meritocratic ideals underpinning the social mobility narrative of widening participation encourage economic and employment aspirations as prime motivations for applying and entering university, widening participation has not coincided with meaningful mobility. Through an analysis of major shifts in higher education policy, we argue that categorisations of the ‘disadvantaged’ student are manufactured to assist universities to fund and legitimate themselves as vehicles of social mobility. In this context, we argue that a precarious legitimacy exists because social mobility operates within a wider culture of embedded class privilege, and this is constantly managed by state regulatory frameworks which reshape and repurpose universities to fit a neoliberal meritocratic image of the larger society and the role of universities within it. Ideas of ‘disadvantage’ service solidarity not with the ‘disadvantaged’ but with educational service providers, as they offer a target for the promotion of neoliberal meritocracy. In the course of this, class differentials are reinforced by channelling ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘advantaged’ students into different niches of the labour market, preserving existing inequalities, and sorting graduates into winners and losers.

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