Collaboration and co-production with Black, Asian and minority ethnic students: working in partnership with our students to inform and deliver access and participation practice

In recent years, the topic of UK-domiciled undergraduate students from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds not accessing, succeeding and progressing as well as their White peers in Higher Education (HE) has gained increased policy and media attention. Institutions are required to address gaps amongst student groups that are underrepresented within HE, including students from BAME backgrounds, through their Office for Students' (OfS) regulated Access and Participation Plan (APP). This paper offers specific examples of how Edge Hill University, a university in North West England, has begun to approach this work in the new regulatory environment. APPs now place an increased emphasis upon research informed practice, student engagement, consultation, and evaluation. This innovative practice article provides a detailed example of genuine collaboration and coproduction with students to develop and deliver APP work, and extends an earlier presentation delivered at the March 2021 Open University Access Participation and Success International Biennial Conference. In this article, the authors outline the development of a new Diversity Access Programme and a BAME Student Advisory Panel. The paper offers a reflective account of how APP leads, Widening Participation (WP) practitioners, evaluators and students can work together effectively in partnership to design and deliver WP initiatives.

Mass University and Social Inclusion: The Paradoxical Effect of Public Policies

The objective of this article is to revisit the role of public policies in the social production and reproduction of university access inequalities that have been made evident more than ever in the current intensified mass higher education context. Although the situation is complex and varies from one societal context to another, a systematic review of the existing literature highlights the undeniable responsibility of public policies in this reproduction through three main channels: guidance systems and educational pathways, institutions’ stratification and hierarchization of fields of study and, finally, the financing of studies and tuition fees.

Educational quality and dropout risk: a causal analysis of the university dropout phenomenon

University dropout is one of the main problems of the Spanish university system due to its high rates. The latest report issued by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN, 2020) shows that more than 30% of students drop out of an undergraduate degree program. In order to explore the phenomenon, in line with the scientific literature, we have focused on identifying personal and family variables associated with university dropout. Using an ex post facto, quantitative, descriptive and causal design methodology, we observed significant relationships between the dependent variable “completion of university degree” and the independent variables “age”, “marital status” and “number of siblings”. In agreement with other researches (Belloc et al, 2010; Diaz Peralta, 2008; Lizarte Simon, 2017) we conclude that university dropout is a multicausal phenomenon that needs to be fully understood. This will allow to maximize the use of resources allocated to higher education and optimize university access, permanence and quality policies.

Best Practices to Address Inequities in Academic Support in the University Access Program

Even though access to higher education (HE) has increased drastically among many institutions globally, some challenges persist, among which are impediments to student success. These challenges could potentially hinder students’ success and impede their smooth articulation to the preferred HE degree. Data were collected through focus group discussions that the Free-Attitude Interview technique facilitated. This study proposes potential strategies for implementing “best practices” to improve students' academic support in the University Access Program (UAP), particularly in the South African context. The proposed “best practices” are based on students who experienced challenges. Among these best practices are that students and tutors need to have regular meetings once or more per week, groups should not include more than fifteen first-year students, a student learning-centered approach should be employed, and students should be partners in the co-creation of the curricula and the co-evaluation of subject-related matters.

State-Anxiety and Academic Burnout Regarding University Access Selective Examinations in Spain During and After the COVID-19 Lockdown

Coping with assessment tests are known to generate anxiety frequently in the students who face them. In academic circumstances with the continued presence of emotional disturbance, high demand, and stress, emotional and physical fatigue, typical of burnout syndrome, and can be detected. Anxiety and burnout are related to each other and even more closely in high-stakes tests. One of these tests is the examination imposed in Spain for access to the university. The objective of this work is to analyze the presence of anxiety and burnout and the relationship between them in students who face these tests, both during the confinement situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and during the pandemic after the lockdown. For this purpose, we used a sample of 1,021 students with a mean age of 17.89 (SD = 1.22, range 17–27). Of these, 866 (84.8%) were students who were taking the test, while the rest were university students who had passed it recently. Our results show high levels of anxiety and burnout in students who face the evaluation test during the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained over time and especially in comparison with students who had already taken the exam. The association between higher levels of anxiety and higher levels of burnout in the students who take these exams was also verified. These results link the relationship between these two variables more solidly and suggest the need to include address anxiety to reduce burnout levels in these students. The results are discussed with regard to prior evidence and their applications.

Student Challenges with the University Access Program in South Africa

This paper reflects on experienced challenges by registered University Access Programme (UAP) students in South Africa. South African learners continue to face challenges in accessing institutions of higher education due to school performance. Therefore, to address this issue, the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa introduced UAP in 1993 to assist deserving students who did not meet university admission requirements due to underperformance at the school level. The UAP seemed to address the issue of access to higher education institution(s). However, once students gained access, they have faced several challenges. A Free-Attitude Interview (FAI) technique was used to identify the challenges that students experienced in UAP. Students indicated the need to improve academic support.

Understanding outreach: the potential of qualitative longitudinal research to enrich the evidence base

Recent calls from the Office for Students, the regulatory body for the English higher education sector, have challenged those engaged in widening university access to ‘strengthen’ the outreach evidence base. Whilst focus groups have proved capable of revealing much about the learner experience and the effectiveness of outreach interventions, the established way in which they have been applied – in capturing views and perceptions at one particular point in time – limits what can be discovered. Adopting a longitudinal approach in the application of this research instrument – by returning to the same group of participants at regular intervals over a number of months – affords a chance to monitor changes in ideas and intentions, and distinguish the important from the fleeting. As the findings from three recent studies that have deployed this approach show, it can also generate richer, more detailed insights than would otherwise be possible.