Student Access, Equity, and Diversity in Higher Education

Education ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Harvey ◽  
Jennifer Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Student Diversity ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Diversity In Higher Education ◽  
Preferential Access

The global expansion of higher education continues apace. According to the typology in Trow’s chapter in 2007, many nations have now entered an era of universal higher education. Despite high overall growth, many groups nevertheless remain under-represented. Most notably, university access is typically limited for people who are financially disadvantaged, have a disability, hail from certain ethnic groups, are Indigenous, and/or live in rural areas. Unequal access raises issues both of social justice and of economic productivity. Nations unable to broaden access to under-represented groups may suffer negative social, democratic, and economic consequences. Despite this imperative, few nations maintain a higher education system that is reflective of their broader population. Higher education is often perceived as a positive force for social mobility, yet it can also serve to reify established structures of class, gender, and ethnicity. Equity remains a contested concept. Proponents of formal equality argue that meritocratic higher education is possible where formal, legal barriers of discrimination are removed. An opposing view holds that structural inequity is so deep that the removal of formal university barriers is necessary but insufficient to deliver fairness. By this view, equity requires more active measures to promote access and success for under-represented groups. Conflicting views of student equity are often represented in affirmative action debates. Many countries provide compensation, bonus points, or other forms of preferential access to support identified disadvantaged groups. Most notably, the United States remains deeply conflicted over the merits and legality of race-based affirmative action, whereby African American, Latino, and other students may be provided preferential access to public and private universities. While attempts to broaden access are made on equity grounds, the importance of student diversity is also often emphasized. Diversity may include ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and other geo-demographic characteristics. Advocates of student diversity highlight research that shows increased quality of learning where the student group holds a wide range of views informed by different backgrounds. This idea of “inclusive excellence” is informed by broader economic arguments of productive diversity and research into behavioral psychology. Alongside growing student diversity in higher education has been a focus on how universities manage that diversity. Studies on campus climate have explored how different student groups experience and identify with their university and the strengths that different groups can bring to higher education.

Assessment in American Higher Education: The Role of Admissions Tests

2019 ◽  
Vol 683 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Zwick
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
College Performance ◽  
Admissions Tests ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Test Optional ◽  
The Impact

In this article, I review the role of college admissions tests in the United States and consider the fairness issues surrounding their use. The two main tests are the SAT, first administered in 1926, and the ACT, first given in 1959. Scores on these tests have been shown to contribute to the prediction of college performance, but their role in the admissions process varies widely across colleges. Although test scores are consistently listed as one of the most important admissions factors in national surveys of postsecondary institutions, an increasing number of schools have adopted “test-optional” policies. At these institutions, test score requirements are seen as a barrier to campus diversity because of the large performance gaps among ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Fortunately, the decentralized higher education system in the United States can accommodate a wide range of admissions policies. It is essential, however, that the impact of admissions policy changes be studied and that the resource implications of these changes be thoroughly considered.

Managing and Supporting Student Diversity in Higher Education

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Benson ◽  
Margaret Heagney ◽  
Lesley Hewitt ◽  
Glenda Crosling ◽  
Anita Devos
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Diversity ◽  
Diversity In Higher Education

Educational Entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu - A Profile

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siluvai Raja
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Education System ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World

Education has been considered as an indispensable asset of every individual, community and nation today. Indias higher education system is the third largest in the world, after China and the United States (World Bank). Tamil Nadu occupies the first place in terms of possession of higher educational institutions in the private sector in the country with over 46 percent(27) universities, 94 percent(464) professional colleges and 65 percent(383) arts and science colleges(2011). Studies to understand the profile of the entrepreneurs providing higher education either in India or Tamil Nadu were hardly available. This paper attempts to map the demographic profile of the entrepreneurs providing higher education in Arts and Science colleges in Tamil Nadu through an empirical analysis, carried out among 25 entrepreneurs spread across the state. This paper presents a summary of major inferences of the analysis.

scholarly journals Educated To Death? Women’s Higher Education, Reproductive Health, And The Scientific Method In The United States, 1870-1900

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Eleanor Naiman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Treatment ◽  
Women's College ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Medical Associations ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Women's Higher Education

From 1870-1890, American gynecologists positioned themselves at the center of debates about women’s education. Gynecologists manipulated social anxiety about shifting demographics and falling birthrates among white middle class women in order to legitimate their emerging discipline. In doing so, they couched American understandings of infertility in a politics of blame and demonized women for their inability to reproduce. Although doctors’ conversations about “sterility” primarily took place within the pages of journals published by all-male medical associations, many women engaged in this debate and challenged medical authority in the pages of popular magazines and newspapers. Female doctors, teachers, scholars, women’s college administrators, and their male allies employed a wide range of rhetorical strategies in their responses to male doctors’ theories. They reframed the debate over higher education and sterility into a discussion of the failings of patriarchal gender norms and the importance of objective scientific inquiry. They did so as the medical profession’s commitment to anecdotal evidence and individual treatment faced pressure from the emerging fields of quantitative studies, epidemiology, and medical statistics. A debate that began with a few vocal doctors with passionate but largely unsubstantiated claims had grown to incorporate discussions about scientific method, women’s rights, and female autonomy.

scholarly journals The Research on the Global Competitiveness of the Leading Russian Universities

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 164-167
Author(s):  
V. S. Senashenko
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
University Ranking ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Russian Higher Education ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Russian Universities

The article is a review of a monograph “The Global Competitiveness of Leading Universities: Models and Methods for Estimating and Forecasting” written by I.P. Boiko, V.G. Khalin, E.M. Anokhina. The book discusses the models and methods for university competitiveness assessment, approaches to the formation of university ranking, specific problems concerning improving of the competitiveness of Russian universities and the system of Russian higher education. The reviewed monograph will be useful to a wide range of readers who are interested in the development of the Russian higher education system.

Broad Access and Steep Stratification in the First Mass System: High Participation Higher Education in the United States of America

2018 ◽  
pp. 227-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Cantwell
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
System Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
History Of Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
High Participation ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a detailed and extensive assessment of the United States of America’s (USA) high participation systems (HPS) of higher education. It considers the history of higher education, system development, and the present condition of higher education in the country. The USA was the first HPS and the American system remains globally influential. Higher education in the USA is a massive enterprise, defined by both excellent and dubious providers, broad inclusion, and steep inequality. The chapter further examines higher education in the USA in light of the seventeen HPS propositions. Perhaps more so than any other system, the American HPS conforms to the propositions. Notably, higher education in the USA is both more diverse horizontally, and stratified vertically, than most other HPS.

Millennials and Moral Panic in the United States and beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-505
Author(s):  
Emily Andrade ◽  
A. James McKeever ◽  
Roberto Rivera ◽  
Elizabeth Withers ◽  
Hyeyoung Woo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transitions To Adulthood ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Generation

There have been numerous discourses around millennials and some of them may sound worrisome. To discuss millennials and moral panic, this study looks at three different areas (i.e., criminal justice, teaching at higher education institutions, and transitions to adulthood in South Korea) with some issues pertinent to millennials and younger generations faced in society currently. Drawing on a wide range of the literature, this study attempts to recognize unique characteristics of our younger generations, to find ways to better understand them using multiple angles, and to identify reasons why we should stay hopeful about the future. Our society will continue to change, often in unpredictable ways, and there will always be a new generation on the horizon. Efforts should be made to work with younger generations, learning from each other and finding ways to work together.

Toward Exclusion through Inclusion: Engendering Reputation with Gender-Inclusive Facilities at Colleges and Universities in the United States, 2001-2013

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander K. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Original Sample ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Formal Organizations ◽  
Campus Newspaper

Ample sociological evidence demonstrates that binary gender ideologies are an intractable part of formal organizations and that transgender issues tend to be marginalized by a wide range of social institutions. Yet, in the last 15 years, more than 200 colleges and universities have attempted to ameliorate such realities by adopting gender-inclusive facilities in which students of any gender can share residential and restroom spaces. What cultural logics motivate these transformations? How can their emergence be reconciled with the difficulty of altering the gender order? Using an original sample of 2,036 campus newspaper articles, I find that support for inclusive facilities frames such spaces as a resource through which an institution can claim improved standing in the field of higher education. This process of engendering reputation allows traditional gender separation in residential arrangements to be overcome, but it also situates institutional responsiveness to transgender issues as a means of enhancing a college or university’s public prestige. This, in turn, produces novel status systems in the field of higher education—albeit ones that perpetuate familiar forms of institutional and cultural exclusion.

Schooling in the United States

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floyd M. Hammack
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Educational Expectations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
Large Expansion ◽  
Adult Status ◽  
The 19Th Century

The rise of schooling, from a peripheral activity of religious groups and some elites to a virtually universal and global experience of nearly all children, has been the object of study for over a century. Socialization, usually accomplished within the family, is how young people were traditionally brought into the skills and knowledge required by adult status. A few were chosen for more specialized and formalized education, among them priests, but “going to school” was a very uncommon human experience until the 19th century in the United States, when the “common school movement” established schools in rural areas and cities. By the second half of the 19th century, mass elementary schooling was in place and the expansion of “comprehensive” secondary education had begun. After World War II, a similar pattern of growth in higher education began to take shape. Increasingly called “postsecondary schooling,” the kinds of organizations offering this level of education were diverse, with a large expansion of public institutions, two- and four-year degree programs, and a robust private sector. As this expansion has taken place, the content of schooling, as well as the forms it has assumed, has grown. The questions scholars have asked about this phenomenon include “why has it taken place?” and “what are its consequences?” This article will focus on the literature documenting the expansion of schooling in the United States, the explanations that have been developed for this expansion, and assessments of its consequences. “Functional” (including human capital) explanations have stressed the technical demands of the labor market as the economy has moved from one based on extraction of resources (like farming) to manufacturing, and on to service activities. This view asserts that formal schooling needed to be expanded to transfer the cognitive skills required to attain independent adult status in the new economy. Alternatively, “conflict” theories see education as a tool used by competing groups to exclude nonmembers from eligibility for positions that provide high rewards. Dominant groups shape educational expectations and content in ways that privilege their own members, thus sustaining their dominance. Finally, “neo-institutional” explanations emphasize how education has become the chief legitimate mechanism for selection of people to adult statuses in society. These perspectives include a vast literature into which this essay will provide entrée. After assaying the theoretical literature, this report will examine the consequences of educational expansion for some specific educational topics, including early childhood education, the “college for all” movement, women in higher education, and the rise of community colleges and for-profit colleges.

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