scholarly journals "Beyond the Barriers": Listening to Immigrant Youth to Transform Higher Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Grace D. Player ◽  
Victoria S. Gill ◽  
Gerald Campano
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Application Process ◽  
College Application ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Institutional Representation

This article explores the ways a university-based research team learned with and from immigrant youth as they collaboratively inquired into issues surrounding access to higher education. Through a close look at the youth’s research, including their discussions and written texts, we examine their desires for higher education and their responses to visiting our campus. We found that the students began to develop both a sense of belonging to higher education and a healthy skepticism of its admissions practices and institutional representation. They were also able to conceptualize their identities, at least in part, as assets to the college application process. From this study, we draw implications for fostering more equitable university-community partnerships.

scholarly journals Bridging the Gap Between Secondary and Tertiary Education for Students with Refugee Backgrounds with Bourdieu

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (Winter) ◽  
pp. 112-139
Author(s):  
Jonathan Birtwell ◽  
Robin Duncan ◽  
Jennifer Carson ◽  
Jessica Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Application Process ◽  
Higher Education Admissions ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Admissions Officers ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
The Impact

Although progress has been made in increasing access at the primary and secondary level, only 1% of youth with refugee backgrounds are enrolled in tertiary education compared to 36% globally. Recent research suggests that tertiary education is fundamental in restoring dignity, security and hope for students with refugee backgrounds as well as preventing engagement with harmful fundamentalist ideologies. Given these potential benefits it is essential to better understand the barriers and develop initiatives to improve participation of students with refugee backgrounds in tertiary education. The main challenges faced by such students in Malaysia are a lack of information about existing opportunities, poor knowledge of the application process and insufficient soft skills required to gain access. This paper presents a case study of the CERTE Bridge Course in Malaysia, which was designed to address the above challenges and ‘bridge’ the gap between secondary and tertiary education for students with refugee backgrounds. Bourdieu’s theory of capital, habitus and field is used to explore the impact of the CERTE Bridge Course on participant’s success in achieving access to higher education. The research used pre- and post-surveys with each cohort to understand educational attainment, goals and interests and allow participants to self-assess development in soft skills. It is argued that the CERTE Bridge Course helped students navigate access to higher education by providing ways for them to develop social capital through improved communication skills and access to a network of sympathetic higher education admissions officers. Students also developed cultural capital and developed their habitus in a way that allowed them to negotiate access by presenting their skills in more recognisable ways in the field of higher education in Malaysia. Finally, the research highlights several immovable barriers in the field and identifies lesser discussed forms of capital, such as aspirational and resilience, as playing an important role in facilitating access.

1. The Neoliberal Logic of Service-Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Snider Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Community Based ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

<?page nr="1"?>Abstract This article investigates the ways in which service-learning manifests within our neoliberal clime, suggesting that service-learning amounts to a foil for neoliberalism, allowing neoliberal political and economic changes while masking their damaging effects. Neoliberalism shifts the relationship between the public and the private, structures higher education, and promotes a façade of community-based university partnerships while facilitating a pervasive regime of control. This article demonstrates that service-learning amounts to an enigma of neoliberalism, making possible the privatization of the public and the individualizing of social problems while masking evidence of market-based societal control. Neoliberal service-learning distances service from teaching and learning, allows market forces to shape university-community partnerships, and privatizes the public through dispossession by accumulation.

Indigenous higher education sector: the evolution of recognised Indigenous Leaders within Australian Universities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Kim Coates ◽  
Michelle Trudgett ◽  
Susan Page
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
Commonwealth Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time

Abstract There is clear evidence that Indigenous education has changed considerably over time. Indigenous Australians' early experiences of ‘colonialised education’ included missionary schools, segregated and mixed public schooling, total exclusion and ‘modified curriculum’ specifically for Indigenous students which focused on teaching manual labour skills (as opposed to literacy and numeracy skills). The historical inequalities left a legacy of educational disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Following activist movements in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Government initiated a number of reviews and forged new policy directions with the aim of achieving parity of participation and outcomes in higher education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Further reviews in the 1980s through to the new millennium produced recommendations specifically calling for Indigenous Australians to be given equality of access to higher education; for Indigenous Australians to be employed in higher education settings; and to be included in decisions regarding higher education. This paper aims to examine the evolution of Indigenous leaders in higher education from the period when we entered the space through to now. In doing so, it will examine the key documents to explore how the landscape has changed over time, eventually leading to a number of formal reviews, culminating in the Universities Australia 2017–2020 Indigenous Strategy (Universities Australia, 2017).

The vocational route to higher education in Finland: Students’ backgrounds, choices and study experiences

2021 ◽  
pp. 147490412199626
Author(s):  
Nina Haltia ◽  
Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret ◽  
Annukka Jauhiainen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Educational Backgrounds ◽  
Mature Students ◽  
Academic Track ◽  
Education Community ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Institutional Habitus

Division between academic and vocational education is a predominant feature of both upper secondary and higher education in Finland as well as in many other country contexts. This article focuses on a minority of higher education students, those who have not proceeded to higher education through the traditional academic track but have enrolled through the vocational route. We deploy the concept of institutional habitus and utilize Eurostudent VI survey data ( N=7318) to analyse the backgrounds and study experiences of higher education students with different kinds of educational backgrounds. Our findings indicate that those enrolling through the vocational route are more often mature students from lower parental educational backgrounds. They have often completed a longer study path and began to see themselves as future higher education students later in their life course. There are also differences in how students with diverse educational backgrounds experience their sense of belonging to the higher education community. This paper focuses on Finland but has relevance for other European countries as the institutional structures and practices discussed in this paper are evident internationally.

scholarly journals Decolonization, the Cold War, and Africans’ routes to higher education overseas, 1957–65

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Eric Burton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Cold War ◽  
North America ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
African Students ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Gain Access

AbstractFrom the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations, both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries, as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine ‘Nile route’ from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the ‘airlifts’ from East Africa to North America; and the ‘exodus’ of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.

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