Abstract
‘Widening participation’ and ‘fair access’ have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s. They were key facets of the 2003 White Paper – The Future of Higher Education – and the subsequent 2004 Higher Education Act, with stated objectives that the reach of higher education should be wider and fairer. In particular, there has been considerable concern about admissions to ‘top universities’, which have remained socially as well as academically exclusive. The principal policy tools used by the Act were the introduction of variable tuition fees, expanded student grants, discretionary bursaries and the new Office for Fair Access (OFFA). This paper draws on publicly available statistics to assess whether the changes implemented by the 2004 Act have indeed made access to English higher education wider and fairer in relation to young people progressing from state schools and colleges and from lower socio‐economic groups. It concludes that, while there is some evidence for modest improvements, these have been concentrated outside the ‘top universities’, which have seen slippage relative to the rest of the sector. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why financial inducements appear to be a flawed and naive approach to influencing student demand.
Highlights
Abstract : ‘Widening participation’ and ‘fair access’ have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s
When steps were taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s to reduce the financial support offered to students, it was feared (Stephens 1990; Harris 1991) that this could lead to a drop in participation from students from lower socio-economic groups
The first year under the changes instituted by the 2004 Higher Education Act was a year of progress in widening participation terms, with improvements on all three performance indicators
Summary
Abstract : ‘Widening participation’ and ‘fair access’ have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s. This paper draws on publicly-available statistics to assess whether the changes implemented by the 2004 Act have made access to English higher education wider and fairer in relation to young people progressing from state schools and colleges and from lower socio-economic groups It concludes that, while there is some evidence for modest improvements, these have been concentrated outside the ‘top universities’, which have seen slippage relative to the rest of the sector. While one focus has been on widening participation, a parallel policy concern about ‘fair access’ to ‘top universities’ has received significant attention This issue has centred on the imbalance of admissions between institutions, in the wake of the integration of polytechnics and colleges into a single higher education sector in 1992. Components have included the government-funded Aimhigher initiative to raise aspirations among schoolchildren (DfES 2003), a major review of admissions practices (Schwartz 2004), targeted additional financial support (DfEE 2000), institutional outreach work and other approaches designed to break down real and perceived ‘barriers’ (NAO 2002; Universities UK 2005; Gorard et al 2007)
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