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In England, more students from a wider range of backgrounds participate in higher education than in previous generations. This has led to a focus on how students from diverse backgrounds can fit be...

Highly selective higher education institutions (HEIs) are simultaneously mandated to enable access for populations which have traditionally been excluded (‘equality’), and to ensure that admitted s...

Professionalising outreach and evaluation work would enhance the quality and rigour of provision, benefit widening participation students and achieve regulatory requirements (Bowes et al. [2019]. The National Collaborative Outreach Programme End of Phase 1 report for the national formative and impact evaluations. Office for Students; Rainford [2020]. “Working with/in institutions: how policy enactment in widening participation is shaped through practitioners’ experience.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 42 (2): 287–303). This article presents practitioners’ experiences of how social justice can often feel unaligned to the technical expertise required in rigorous project design and evaluation. Professionalising outreach would achieve both improved practice and meet practitioners’ needs for development and a united professional voice. A professional body sharing standard methods of practice, offering CPD and skills would elevate outreach practitioners to a ‘professional’ standing (Eraut [1994]. Developing professional knowledge and competence. Falmer Press).

Higher Education Institutions in England are an integral part of the government’s social mobility strategy. Contextualisation of undergraduate admissions decisions has emerged as a key tool towards...

This project investigated the postsecondary education aspirations of 27 secondary school-aged students living in greater London, England and greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. An innovative resear...

Background Students from disadvantaged backgrounds continue to be underrepresented in medical education. Widening participation (WP) or outreach schemes seek to increase diversity. Drawing on previously unexplored data from a scheme called Realising Opportunities in England, this study aimed to investigate which high‐achieving socioeconomically disadvantaged students in a national WP scheme went on to study medicine at university. Methods This retrospective longitudinal study analyzed data of 2665 16‐year‐olds on a WP scheme in England between 2010 and 2014. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analyses investigated any differences between those that went on to study medicine and those that did not. Eligibility for studying medicine, student's neighborhood, gender, ethnicity, parent's higher education experience, exam attainment, interest in medicine, and their subject of choice for university at age 16 were considered. Results Of the 1850 students who were tracked to a university destination, only 55 (3%) studied medicine. Participants with high exam results, female, Asian, and from neighborhoods of higher university entry were most likely to study medicine. In the multivariate model, only prior attainment and intention to study medicine predicted studying medicine. Three hundred and forty Realising Opportunities participants expressed interest in studying medicine at age 16, but 80 (24%) were found to have unrealistic aspirations based on their prior academic attainment. Conclusions Attainment and intention were key factors for predicting medicine enrolment among these outreach scheme participants. Some students interested in studying medicine had insufficient academic attainment to compete for medical school places. Efforts to equalize attainment and provide guidance for career choice are crucial factors for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Pro-Vice-Chancellors (PVCs) form the second-tier leadership of UK higher education institutions. However, their role and position remain under-theorised and under-researched. The present article explores the extent to which a PVC Education role requires core expertise in education or generic managerial skills. Using a mixed-methods approach, we first establish the disciplinary backgrounds of PVCs Education in Russell Group (RG) and post-1992 institutions. Fewer than one in five PVCs Education have a disciplinary background or additional formal training in education. Second, we conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with PVCs Education, Heads of Education Departments and Heads of Learning and Teaching units. These interviews suggest the PVC Education role requires managerial skills, usually acquired in previous headships, as well as academic credibility and knowledge of institutional processes rather than particular expertise in education. In sum, generic managerial skills rather than educational ...

There is a lack of feasible, standardized approaches to enhance postgraduate academic experience using active learning in current resource-constrained higher education (HE). We developed and implemented a novel peer-based small-group tutorial model derived from separate strands of pedagogical theory and evidence.Designed to be mutually beneficial, the model was tested through delivery of 5-6 hourly sessions to tutorial groups comprising postgraduate taught student tutees (n = 101) and postgraduate research tutors (n = 24; senior peers) from a psychology faculty of a UK Russell Group university. Mixed-methods pre-post assessments included bespoke and standardized questionnaires plus thematic analysis of written feedback.Benefits were reported by both tutors and tutees, including increased motivation and knowledge, praise of the flexible and interactive environment. Tutees experienced general and specific learning improvements, while tutors’ confidence and enjoyment in teaching increased.Our validation of a clearly-articulated model for effective senior/junior-peer tutorial delivery progresses knowledge of small-group learning and may enhance academic experiences for our learners and future teachers.

We present the experience of 10 British low-socio-economic status students who were supported by a charitable scheme to be internationally mobile and who are currently studying at a range of highly...

Purpose The purpose of this study is twofold: to make explicit academics’ tacit knowledge of academic employment and to develop the educational research and employability skills of 12 postgraduate researchers. Design/methodology/approach Twelve postgraduate researchers from ten different disciplines conducted 24 semi-structured interviews (12 with early career academics, 12 with senior academics). Respondents shared the skills, experiences and attributes sought when hiring and their lived experience of being academics. Findings The importance given to both explicitly stated (publications, teaching experience) and implicit (values, behaviour) factors varies greatly among individual academics. There is a mismatch between stated job requirements and the realities of academic life. A students-as-partners project fosters critical engagement with these questions and offers other benefits to participants. Research limitations/implications Most respondents work at one research-intensive English institution, potentially limiting generalisability to teaching-led and international institutions. Practical/implications Researcher development programmes should make explicit the range of factors considered in hiring while also encouraging critical engagement with the realities of academic work. Through students-as-partners projects, postgraduate research students can uncover first-hand what academic life is like and what hiring committees are looking for. Originality/value Through involving students-as-partners, the research question changed to reflect the actual concerns of those contemplating an academic career. Students gained invaluable awareness of academic hiring and insights into academic life, as well as transferable skills.

This article reviews the idea of contextualizing applicants to higher education in order to widen access. First, the meaning of contextualized admissions is discussed before laying out the rationale for contextualizing applicants and the beneficiaries of the policy. The final sections discuss key critiques of contextualized admission and conclude by arguing that contextualized admission does go some way to addressing the access challenge. To fully realise its potential as a policy intervention though, it is most helpfully part of integrated support for students throughout university and is mindful of the role of universities in wider society to create more equal progression trajectories for young people from a range of backgrounds.

This is a book about college (university) admission in the United States. It is specifically about predictors of ‘who is admitted’ based on a range of factors. At the heart of the book is the quest...

This article focuses on questions and attitudes towards higher education in the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey series. First, we analyse the changing BSA questions (1983–2010) in the context of key policy reports. Our results show that changes in the framing of higher education questions correspond with changes in the macro-discourse of higher education policies. Second, we focus on the 2010 BSA survey responses to investigate how attitudes towards higher education are related to respondents’ characteristics. Respondents’ socio-economic position predicts attitudes towards higher education. Graduates and professionals are most likely to support a reduction in higher education opportunities, but those who have so far benefitted least from higher education are supportive of expansion. One interpretation – with potential implications for social mobility – is that those who have already benefited from higher education are most inclined to pull the ladder up behind them.

What does “fairness” mean with respect to the distribution of access to higher education? We conceived this special issue as part of a broad conversation to address this and related questions across disciplines and across nations. Within that conversation philosophers have asked what criteria should be used to allocate funding and offers of admission at selective institutions (Fullinwider and Lichtenberg 2004). Assuming the notion of “merit” comes into play when answering these first questions, others have focused on how merit should be conceived and assessed (Daniels 1978; Selmi 1995; Guinier and Sturm 2001). Moving from a normative to a descriptive standpoint, sociologists such as A. H. Halsey (2011) have examined the criteria that countries actually do use—or did use in the past—to decide who will be admitted whenever some selection needs to be made. Given these criteria, to what extent and through which mechanisms do existing inequalities of class, race/ ethnicity, and gender impact university entrance? Such questions motivate many contemporary analysts (Shavit et al. 2007; Charles et al. 2009; Espenshade and Walton Radford 2009). Scholars have also looked into the initiatives now taking place with a view to alleviating these inequalities (Grodsky 2007; van Zanten 2009). Finally, we sought to connect this concern for “widening participation”—to use a ubiquitous British phrase—to the research on the consequences of the marketization of higher education (Callender 2006; Douglass 2007; Kirby 2011). Those are some of the general questions that

This article reviews the findings from a UK nationwide project on the causes of differences in student outcomes in higher education. The project was commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and reported in July 2015. We found that universities with an embedded, institution-wide approach that engaged senior managers, academic staff, professional service staff and students as stakeholders and agents in the differential outcomes agenda were most promising in decreasing progression gaps. Universities use targeted and universal interventions to affect change. Initiatives that tackle assessment and the content and meaning of curricula are a promising stream of interventions. Overall, more evaluations on what works and sharing of practice will further enable the sector to support all higher education students in reaching their academic potential.