Colin McCaig

English Universities, Additional Fee Income and Access Agreements: Their Impact on Widening Participation and Fair Access.

ABSTRACT: This paper argues that the introduction of access agreements following the establishment of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has consolidated how English higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves in the marketplace in relation to widening participation. However, the absence of a national bursary scheme has led to obfuscation rather than clarification from the perspective of the consumer. This paper analyses OFFAs 2008 monitoring report and a sample of twenty HEIs’ original 2006 and revised or updated access agreements (2008) to draw conclusions about the impact of these agreements on notions of ‘fair access’ and widening participation. The authors conclude that, unsurprisingly in an increasingly market-driven system, institutions use access agreements primarily to promote enrolment to their own programmes rather than to promote system-wide objectives. As a consequence of this marketing focus, previous differences between pre-1992 and post-1992 institutions in relation to widening participation and fair access are perpetuated, leading to both confusion for consumers and an inequitable distribution of bursary and other support mechanisms for the poorest applicants to HE.

Practical Research and Evaluation : A Start-to-Finish Guide for Practitioners

Practical Research and Evaluation is a handbook of social science research methods for practitioner-researchers. It enables readers to carry out research projects and evaluations; commission resear ...

The retreat from widening participation? The National Scholarship Programme and new access agreements in English higher education

This article critically analyses the impact of reforms to the student financial support system in English higher education. Comparative analysis of financial support mechanisms and patterns of outreach engagement with groups underrepresented in higher education show a marked deterioration in the levels of cash support available and an increasingly focus on the brightest poor students (in the form of merit aid) at the expense of the generality of poorer students since the new support programme came into place. This can be seen as part of a wider policy shift away from generic widening participation to the targeting of specific cohorts to raise the attainment level of intakes or to meet recruitment shortfalls. The findings are located in a context of a (near) trebling of tuition fees, stagnation in overall student numbers and the promotion of market mechanisms, all of which can be seen as a challenge to the notion of social justice through the higher education system.

An ecological fallacy in higher education policy: the use, overuse and misuse of 'low participation neighbourhoods'

One form of ecological fallacy is found in the dictum that ‘you are where you live’ – otherwise expressed in the idea that you can infer significant information about an individual or their family from the prevailing conditions around their home. One expression of this within higher education in the UK has been the use (and, arguably, overuse and misuse) of ‘low participation neighbourhoods’ (LPNs) over the last 15 years. These are areas that have been defined, from historic official data, as having a lower-than-average propensity to send their young people on to university. These LPNs have increasingly become used within the widening participation and social mobility agendas as a proxy for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have the potential to benefit from higher education, but who would not attend without encouragement, support and/or incentives. In this article, we explore the various uses to which LPNs have been put by policy makers, universities and practitioners, including the targeting of outreach activities, the allocation of funding and the monitoring of the social mix within higher education. We use a range of official data to demonstrate that LPNs have a questionable diagnostic value, with more disadvantaged families living outside them than within them, while they contain a higher-than-expected proportion of relatively advantaged families. We also use content analysis of university policy documents to demonstrate that universities have adopted some questionable practices with regard to LPNs, although some of these are now being actively discouraged.

The strange death of number controls in England : paradoxical adventures in higher education market making

The paper analyses the impact of a higher education (HE) funding mechanism, the ‘High Grades’ policy, introduced as part of a student number control regime in England that was introduced in 2012/13 and withdrawn after only two years. This marked the end of an experiment in market making based on quality and price within a fixed student number cap. The paper analyses the impact of policy in key areas of institutional behaviour, which, taken together, illustrates why the specific HE market mechanism failed, and how longer term marketisation is affecting the different institution types in the sector in ways inimical to autonomy, equity and social justice. The paper concludes that the policy failed due to an overreliance on ideologically driven policy levers that failed to reflect the subtlety and nuance of the English HE market.

Conceptualising Equality, Equity and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: Fractures and Fault Lines in the Neoliberal Imaginary

This chapter explores the extent to which policy changes designed to stimulate the marketisation of English higher education (HE) have changed the nature of the enterprise. It identifies emerging trajectories and explores how various aspects of marketisation impact on system differentiation and the possibilities of a more equitable HE. It identifies consistencies in relation to the continuing transfer of the burden of costs from the state to the individual and in the growth of ‘academic capitalism’, first identified by Slaughter and Leslie almost 20 years ago. It also identifies contradictions at the heart of neoliberal reform of HE, which include elite conceptions of the role of HE alongside a neoliberal positioning which views the HE market as sufficient to ensure fair access.

English higher education: widening participation and the historical context for system differentiation

This chapter describes the roots of widening participation (WP) work in government policy and institutional practice from the 1970s onwards. It traces the beginnings of state involvement in WP, following the Dearing Report and the election of a Labour government in 1997. It tracks the intensification of market approaches within higher education (HE) and the resultant sharpening of institutional differentiation manifested in the distinction between those institutions focusing on social mobility for ‘the brightest’ and those engaged in generic aspiration-raising outreach among all young people. It explores the tensions between these two developments and the competing claims made about increasing equity and diversity in the English HE population.

System differentiation in England: the imposition of supply and demand

This chapter describes changing state and sector policy: the rise of the ‘student-as-consumer’ in recent government policy and its impact on institutional behaviour. It highlights the unpredictability of different institutional responses to market interventions by the state, in particular of attempts to concentrate the highest qualified applicants and the most prestigious institutions in a ‘premium’ market segment. It suggests that those institutions in the middle of the distribution are thus pressurised by league tables and other indicators of esteem, to alter the balance of their provision in ways that are often detrimental to widening access and can act to reduce system diversity.

The Marketisation of English Higher Education: A Policy Analysis of a Risk-based System

This book traces the development of a fully marketised higher education system in England over a 30-year period, and identifies five distinct stages of market reforms culminating in the Higher Education and Research Act (HMSO, 2017). The Act shifted the risks of institutional failure (and the prospect of market exit) onto applicants, presenting them with ever more applicant choice information and encouraging them to use their consumer behaviour to oblige weaker providers’ lower tuition fees or lose market share to new competitors. The new regulatory regime represents a marked departure from previous attempts to introduce market dynamism into the sector and places the English HE system at the forefront of a global trend of system marketisation. The book employs a critical policy discourse analysis and addresses several key aspects of the current higher education policy landscape. It considers the extent to which there been a continuity of policy from the encouragement of efficiencies and accountability in the 1980s to the emphasis on competition and risk in 2017; whether the marketisation process is designedly cumulative or has developed in response to factors beyond the control of policymakers; and what the English case can tell us about the nature of neoliberalism and the future trajectories of other national systems in the process of marketising and differentiating their institutions.

Book Review: Access and Expansion Post-Massification: Opportunities and Barriers to Further Growth in Higher Education Participation Jongbloed, Ben W.A and Vossensteyn, Hans (eds.), 2015

Most of us will be familiar with the concept of the journey from an elite to a mass and then a universal system of Higher Education, first introduced by Martin Trow in 1973. Taken as a whole this book suggest that HE systems worldwide are now moving beyond mass participation and into a universal phase with participation rates of 50% or more now common among developed and developing nations. The theme of the book, as its subtitle suggests, is to explore what is different about post-massification in relation to both opportunities and barriers there may be for further growth. The book asks what international policy lessons, about quality, value for money and public spending restraints (especially in the wake of 2008 crash) can be drawn on.