Becoming not Being: using the rhizome in widening participation evaluation

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-254
Author(s):  
Naomi Clements ◽  
Matthew Short
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Evaluation Practice ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
What Works ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Southern Universities

Evaluation of widening participation (WP) activity is becoming a core expectation within higher education. It now forms a central focus to access and participation plans: a key document to qualify as a higher education provider within England. The new regulator for English higher education providers, the Office for Students (OfS), has placed their evaluation strategy within discourses of value for money, risk and accountability, reflecting the marketised higher education system (OfS, 2018).<br/> This innovative practice article extends a concept presented at the Open University's Access, Participation and Success event 'Evaluating WP initiatives: Overcoming the Challenges' in February 2019. In this article we provide an example of how the Southern Universities Network (SUN) is developing the concept of the rhizome into evaluative practice that challenges established evaluation methods currently celebrated by the regulator. As part of the strategically funded Uni Connect programme (OfS, 2020), our evaluation practice is expected to provide evidence of 'what works' in wid ening participation activity. As evaluators, our practice should ensure our activities are fit for purpose and provide positive outcomes for our participants. Within this article we outline why our current evaluative practice does not allow for transformative widening participation (Jones and Thomas, 2005) and why we must think wider than linear timelines and fixed measurements to truly understand what works.

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 WIDENING ACCESS IS THE END OF STORY? ENSURING EQUAL ACCESS AND IMPROVING CONTINUATION RATIO OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDONESIA

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Rizqy Amelia Zein
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Equal Access ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Research Technology ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Continuation Ratio

In the last two decades, Indonesian higher education system has expanded rapidly in regards to the number of new established institutions and the number of students enrolled in higher education. However, the participation rate within university level is stated as low. In 2016, it only reached 31 percent. It means, although massification has been implemented within higher education system, it is not in line in ensuring equal access to pupils from disadvantaged social groups such as women, lower socio-economic statuses, and students from outer or periphery areas. Rather, it has been evident as a daunting task. Widening participation is not the end of story, since Indonesia should be dealing with another problem which is non-continuation. By performing secondary analysis on several datasets released by World Bank, Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, and Indonesian Statistics Bureau, this paper explores several major findings on accessibility and retention problem of Indonesian higher education.

scholarly journals Is Peer Review Fit for Purpose?

2022 ◽  
pp. 223-241
Author(s):  
Malcolm Tight
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
First Century ◽  
Doctoral Degrees ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Academic Employment ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
The Uk

AbstractPeer review is endemic to judgement in higher education. It is assumed that when we need to make a judgement on the quality of something—student performance, academic employment, teaching, research and publication—then we may rely on the assessment of peers, whether they be fellow students, lecturers or more senior academics. This chapter will illustrate and challenge this assumption, and assess how ‘fit for purpose’ peer review is in twenty-first century academe. It will focus on different practices of peer review in the contemporary higher education system, it will also question how well they work, how they might be improved and what the alternatives are. The examples to be discussed include refereed journal articles, the assessment of doctoral degrees and the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

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.

scholarly journals Managing Performance in the Higher Education System

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 260
Author(s):  
Nisha Solanki
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Work Place ◽  
Performance Management System ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Performance Management Systems ◽  
Higher Education System

<div><p><em>Managing Performance of employees plays a focal role in any organisation. The current study identifies the need of an efficient and biased free Performance management system in the Higher Education Institutions. Performance Management plays a vital role in motivating the employees to bring efficiency in the work place. Although institutions and the management are aware of its relevance and the positive outcomes, yet it remains more of a concept which is actually not implemented correctly. With the helping of existing literature and data sources, this paper aims to highlight the importance of Performance management systems. Also suggesting how to overcome the various hindrances that are been faced in the institutions. </em></p></div>

scholarly journals Getting Value for Money in Higher Education

2015 ◽  
pp. 15-16
Author(s):  
Philip Altbach ◽  
Pawan Agarwal
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Reasonable Proportion

India's higher education system, while much criticized, does some things well. It provides impressive rates of access compared to other countries at similar levels of development. India also spends a reasonable proportion of its GDP on education, and pays its academics reasonably well. But it does not get appropriate quality from this level of support.

Unknown knowns: implicit epistemological hierarchies in the evaluation of widening participation activities

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-43
Author(s):  
Julian Crockford
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Higher Education Funding ◽  
Stakeholder Groups ◽  
What Works ◽  
Guidance Documents ◽  
Robust Evidence ◽  
Fair Access

Comparing guidance documents issued by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Students (OfS) over the course of 15 years, I argue that the introduction of a new higher education regulator in 2018 caused a shift in the positioning of widening participation evaluation in HE policy. I suggest that the resulting changes have significant implications for the configuration of key evaluation stakeholder groups and that these reconfigurations, in turn, have implications for the epistemic relationships at play in the evaluation process. In particular, the way in which a mode of evaluation is framed by policy can determine who has the power to shape dominant definitions of meaningful evidence and whose situated forms of knowledge are considered to constitute robust evidence. The ongoing tension between positivist and post-positivist approaches can be eased, I argue, by focusing on the role of delivery practitioners as producers of evidence about 'what works' in their own contexts. I conclude by drawing on other practice-based disciplines such as social work and nursing to suggest that we might learn from work that is already advanced in these areas, which appears to have found a balance between evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence.

The Influence of Western Qur'anic Scholarship in Turkey

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-44
Author(s):  
Mehmet Akif Koç
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Turkish Higher Education ◽  
Tremendous Importance ◽  
Cultural World

After first surveying the development of academic studies of Islam within the modern Turkish higher education system, this essay provides an inventory of material that has been translated from Western languages into Turkish. It is inevitable that orientalist studies will have a place of tremendous importance in this analysis. However, approaches to the Qur'an and its exegesis which have been developed under the influence of the Western scientific and cultural world encompass a larger range of literature that includes not only the orientalist studies themselves but also the criticisms directed against these studies. Particular attention is paid to the work of Fazlur Rahman and Arab scholars influenced by Western methods, and an assessment of the various issues related to the critique of orientalist works is provided.

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