From Access to Widening Participation: Responses to the changing population in Higher Education in the UK

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Macdonald ◽  
Erica Stratta
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
The Uk

scholarly journals Risk, Choice and Social Disadvantage: Young People's Decision-Making in a Marketised Higher Education System

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl Clark ◽  
Anna Mountford-Zimdars ◽  
Becky Francis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Disadvantage ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Tuition Fees ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
High Achieving Students ◽  
Risk Choice ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

Rising tuition fees in England have been accompanied by a policy mandate for universities to widen participation by attracting students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This article focuses on one such group of high achieving students and their responses to rising tuition fees within the context of their participation in an outreach scheme at a research-intensive university in the UK. Our findings suggest that rather than being deterred from attending university as a result of fee increases, these young people demonstrated a detailed and fairly sophisticated understanding of higher education provision as a stratified and marketised system and justified fees within a discourse of ‘private good.’ Our analysis situates their ‘risk’ responses within the discursive tensions of the fees/widening participation mandate. We suggest that this tension highlights an intensified commodification of the relationship between higher education institutions and potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds in which widening participation agendas have shifted towards recruitment exercises. We argue that an ongoing effect of this shift has resulted in increased instrumentalism and a narrowing of choices for young people faced with the task of seeking out ‘value for money’ in their degrees whilst concurrently engaging in a number of personalised strategies aimed at compensating for social disadvantage in a system beset by structural inequalities.

scholarly journals Social Identification, Widening Participation and Higher Education: Experiencing Similarity and Difference in an English Red Brick University

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-369
Author(s):  
Tom Clark ◽  
Rita Hordósy
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Similarity And Difference ◽  
The University

In 2012, the UK government introduced the National Scholarship Programme – a scheme that aimed to ensure that young people from families with low household incomes would not be discouraged from entry into higher education by increases in tuition fees. Drawing on longitudinal evidence in the form of 80 semi-structured interviews conducted in an English Red Brick University over a 3-year period, this article uses Jenkins’ work on social identification to examine the processes by which these post-2012 undergraduates used and experienced the financial support made available to them as part of the Programme. The article explores how the initially categorical label associated with being a student in receipt of financial assistance was variously understood and experienced as they moved through their degree. Not only did the additional finance allow students to avoid excessive part-time work, recipients also felt increasingly valued by the institution when they began to recognise how their financial circumstances differed from their peers, and that the university had made this provision for them. It remains to be seen whether these, more intangible, benefits of non-repayable financial support will transfer to the system of ‘enhanced’ loans that have subsequently replaced maintenance grants and the National Scholarship Programme.

scholarly journals Massification, Marketisation and Loss of Differentiation in Pre-Entry Marketing Materials in UK Higher Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 304
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Knight
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Equity Issues ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Student Cohorts ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Uk Higher Education

Since the mid-1970s, the higher education system in the UK has massified. Over this period, the government policy drivers for higher education have shifted towards a homogenised rationale, linking higher education to the economic well-being of the country. The massification of higher education has involved a widening of participation from traditional students to new and diverse student cohorts with differing information needs. The increased positioning of students as consumers by higher education means the student choice process has become complex. Drawing on a recently conferred doctorate, this article asks whether the messages sent by institutions about the motivation for undertaking a degree have changed during the recent period of massification of UK higher education. It asks how such changes are reflected, overtly or in coded form, in the institutional pre-entry ‘prospectus’ documents aimed at students. Taking a discourse-historical approach, the work identifies six periods of discourse change between 1976 and 2013, analysing prospectuses from four case-study institutions of different perceived status. The research finds that the materials homogenise gradually over the period and there is a concordant concealment of the differential status, purpose and offer of the institutions, alongside an increase in the functional importance of the coded signalling power of the differential prestige of undergraduate degrees within the UK. This research’s finding that the documents produced by institutions have become increasingly difficult to differentiate highlights equity issues in provision of marketing in terms of widening participation and fair access aims.

What is Popular Music Studies? Some observations

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Cloonan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
The Uk

Popular Music Studies (PMS) is now taught in over 20 higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and numerous others across the world. This article outlines the constituent parts of PMS in the UK and questions its status as a discipline in its own right. It concludes by arguing that, having established itself, PMS will need to deal with two key pressures in modern academic life – those of conducting research and widening participation. In the former instance, PMS might have to be pragmatic, in the latter lies potential for radicalism.

The Use of Debating as an Aid to Effective Widening Participation in Psychology

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy Coogan ◽  
Chris Pawson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Traditional Student ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Degree Of Innovation

The UK widening participation agenda is in place to unlock the doors of universities for many students. However, contrary to popular belief, beyond the higher education sector, this widening of participation need not mean a reduction in academic standards. It does, however, demand a different approach to learning and teaching and, the authors argue, a degree of innovation. This paper focuses on one way in which the ‘less traditional’ student can participate in an effective course of study by starting at Level 0 and using nontraditional means of assessment, to which their often less academic backgrounds are better suited in the early stages of their studies. The particular module discussed herein introduces key studies in psychology using the skills of debating and essay writing. The evaluation of this module shows that the students gained a great deal of confidence from debating and enjoyed the experience.

scholarly journals Raised aspirations and attainment? A review of the impact of Aimhigher (2004–2011) on widening participation in higher education in England

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Doyle ◽  
Martyn Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Participation In Higher Education ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Quality Of Research

Aimhigher was discontinued on 31 July 2011. This paper reviews the literature analysing its contribution to widening participation to higher education in the UK. Successes of Aimhigher are considered alongside its challenges; particularly the necessity to situate policy within the diverse demands of 42 areas covering England. These issues are considered in the context of wider contemporary debates concerning the quality of research into widening participation and instruments used to evaluate policy. Four strands of literature are identified and analysed: Aimhigher's impact and evaluation, its effectiveness in targeting beneficiaries, the progression and tracking of students and policy.

scholarly journals Re-imagining Diversity: Towards an Anthropology for Disruption in UK Higher Education

Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Alison Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Diversity Training ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Institutional Diversity ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Inclusive Learning ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Uk Higher Education

From Athena Swan accreditations to Access and Widening Participation agendas, diversity training and renewed pedagogic approaches to inclusive learning, the higher education landscape is now awash with the language of ‘diversity’ as policy and practice. The institutionalisation of ‘diversity’ is a welcome method of inclusion, yet it is often reproduced as ‘happy talk’ (Bell and Hartmann 2007) that pacifies the call for meaningful structural and institutional change, silencing and even reinforcing the inequality it seeks remedy (i.e. Ahmed, 2012; Alexander, 2005; Archer, Hutchings & Ross 2003; Kirton, Greene & Dean 2007; Mohanty, 2003; Puwar, 2004). Taking these paradoxical dimensions of diversity as ethnographic and conceptual points of departure, this special issue seeks to unravel some of the everyday experiences, practices and policies encoded in diversity ‘speak’ and ‘diversity work’ (Ahmed 2012) across anthropology departments in the UK. By giving credence to accounts of the daily graft of ‘diversity work’, together with embodied and lived experiences of what ‘being diverse’ entails on the ground, we strive to productively mobilise decentred ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway, 1988) in order to displace the continued centrality of white / elite / heteronormative / ableist reference points at the heart of much higher education institutional diversity strategies and inclusion agendas (cf. also Puwar, 2004). For us, the term ‘re-imagining’ is a call for positive political transformation in which we hope the difficult, uncomfortable - but hopefully - fruitful questions and critiques posed by papers in this special issue galvanise a space for diverse-led action. It is thus against this backdrop that we try to re-imagine diversity in a new light: to bear witness to those who live its effects and thereby reveal the potential to democratically and holistically re-structure anthropology from the ground up.

scholarly journals To What Extent can ‘Bring Your Own Device’ be an Enabler to Widening Participation in Higher Education for the Socially Disadvantaged?

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bass ◽  
Siavosh Haghighi Movahed
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Bring Your Own Device ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Barriers To Learning ◽  
Traditional Lecture ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Participation In Higher Education ◽  
Government Legislation

Certain elements of higher education are historically regarded as being elitist and steeped in so much history and tradition that many institutions are unwilling to change to cater for the populations that they serve. Despite reams of government legislation and continued pressure from social groups the proportion of university students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds remains stubbornly low. This research aims to look beyond the financial and psychological support given to these groups and instead see what can be done to overcome the barriers to learning they face by utilising a Bring Your Own Device strategy. This research has focused on socially disadvantaged individuals from the UK and the findings have led to the conclusion that BYOD can be an enabler to widening participation. However, it is not an overarching solution for all and there is a distinct need for the technology to be properly integrated into teaching activities as some academic staff remain resolute to delivering in the traditional lecture format that does not facilitate engagement or interaction.

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