Abstract
Although participation in higher education (HE) has expanded in Europe, social inequalities remain a major political challenge. As HE expansion has not led to equal access and success, the mechanisms behind policies seeking to reduce inequalities need to be examined. Focusing on the widening participation agenda, this article investigates how universities translate political demands to their local contexts. The translation perspective is adopted to study the German HE system as an example characterized by high social exclusion. Based on policy document analysis, the study first explores the rationales underlying the discourse on widening participation. Second, a multiple case study design is used to investigate the organizational responses to the demand of widening participation. The findings indicate that the political discourse is dominated by two perspectives that regard widening participation as either a means to bring about social justice or to ensure a reliable pool of skilled labor. The study further reveals that different legitimizing strategies serve to link the policy of widening participation to local contexts. This study contributes to research on social inequalities in HE by introducing a translation perspective that permits analysis at both macro and organizational levels, while acknowledging institutional variations in organizational responses to political demands.
Highlights
The shift from elite to mass higher education (HE) system has resulted in the expansion of participation rates that has not necessarily lead to ensuring access for groups who have been traditionally underrepresented in HE (Osborne, 2003; Schuetze & Slowey, 2002)
The analysis of policy documents revealed that the political discourse on widening participation in Germany is dominated by two different perspectives, the social justice perspective and the economic perspective
The findings of the policy documents indicate that the widening participation policy discourse contains two dominant perspectives, perceiving widening participation either as a means to improve social justice or to secure a pool of skilled labor
Summary
The shift from elite to mass higher education (HE) system has resulted in the expansion of participation rates that has not necessarily lead to ensuring access for groups who have been traditionally underrepresented in HE (Osborne, 2003; Schuetze & Slowey, 2002). The result is organizational isomorphism, which provides only a limited role for agency on the side of organizational actors (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2009) Contrary to this theoretical assumption, a closer look at the organizational level reveals that HE institutions differ considerably in the way they approach the call for promoting access and participation and the extent to which they turn it into a relevant issue for their own agenda (Hanft, 2012; Kehm, 2000). To provide empirical insights into the mechanisms behind the policies seeking to reduce inequalities, this article is guided by two research questions It examines what constitutes the idea of widening participation within the political discourse in Germany. To achieve these research aims, this study adopts a translation perspective (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996), which appears suitable for studying both the macro level of the political discourse and the organizational level of HE institutional responses
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