University Places Research Articles

Reconceptualising fair access to highly academically selective universities

The higher education regulator for England has set challenging new widening access targets requiring universities to rethink how merit is judged in admissions. Universities are being encouraged to move away from the traditional meritocratic equality of opportunity model of fair access, which holds that university places should go to the most highly qualified candidates irrespective of social background, in accordance with the principles of procedural fairness. Instead, they are being asked to move towards what we term the meritocratic equity of opportunity model, which holds that prospective students’ qualifications should be judged in light of the socioeconomic circumstances in which these were obtained to enhance distributive fairness, a practice known in the UK as contextualised admissions. In this paper, we critically discuss the theoretical underpinnings of these two competing perspectives on fair access and review the existing empirical evidence base, drawing together for the first time insights from our ESRC and Nuffield Foundation funded studies of fair access to highly academically selective universities in England. We argue that reconceptualising fair access in terms of distributive fairness rather than procedural fairness offers a more socially just set of principles on which to allocate valuable but scarce places at the most academically selective universities in England, unless or until such time as the vertical stratification of higher education institutions is reduced or eliminated entirely.

Remaking higher education for the post‐COVID‐19 era: Critical reflections on marketization, internationalization and graduate employment

This Special Issue was conceived and developed following a series of international conferences held in Asia, with a particular focus on critically reflecting upon higher education development in the region from broader social and political economy perspectives. Some of the papers in this Special Issue were selected from presentations in the East Asia Social Policy (EASP) Research Network Conference successfully held in Taiwan in 2018, while others were chosen from international events held at Lingnan University in Hong Kong presenting critical reviews and reflections on internationalization, marketization and graduate employment of higher education in Asia. This introductory article puts the discussions of the selected papers in this issue in context, with critical reflections on the key issues being examined in these papers. The Special Issue is published when the world is still confronting the unprecedented global health crisis resulted from the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article discusses the higher education development trends in Asia through the massification, diversification and internationalisation processes in transforming the higher education system and examines how these development trends are affected by the COVID‐19 crisis.

Online Dispute Resolution Simulation

Online dispute resolution (ODR) simulation workshops are designed to provide students with a virtual learning environment that empowers our students to gain legal and digital skills for their readiness in future employment. Students are invited to act as complainants, opponents and arbitrators/mediators to resolve a real-life case in a team-based, student-centred and research-informed teaching and learning environment. The ODR simulation workshops have been conducted by the author among both undergraduate and postgraduate law students since 2007 at Brunel University and other places. This ongoing project was initially funded by the Nominet Trust in 2010. Throughout these years, ODR simulation workshops have been well-received by students from different cultures, particularly where English is not their first language. Students were asked to conduct online arbitration or mediation hearings and submit arbitral awards and mediation settlements, as well as delivering technical observation notes and group presentations after the process. This article promotes the use of ODR simulation to effectively enhance students’ learning experience, legal skills (i.e. critical thinking, legal reasoning, problem-solving skills) and digital skills. It puts ODR simulation into the context of the shift in teaching approaches in the digital age and explains how modern legal education can be shaped to prepare for digital lawyering.
 Keywords: online dispute resolution; online arbitration; digital literacy; digital empowerment; artificial intelligence; digital lawyering; flexible learning; team-based learning; student-centred learning, research-informed teaching.

Teaching to the test: The effects of coaching on English-proficiency scores for university entry

Despite arriving with the required language qualifications, many international students struggle with the linguistic demands of a university degree. Using the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an example, this study explored how short but intensive preparation programmes may affect high-stakes English-proficiency test scores with which students apply for university places. The participants were 89 Chinese speakers of English as a foreign language in Shanghai. They were tested twice, four weeks apart, on IELTS and three other measures of English ability: The Oxford Online Placement Test, a vocabulary test, and the speed and accuracy of sentence comprehension. Between the two testing points, 45 participants underwent testspecific training consisting of previous IELTS papers, offered by a large test-preparation establishment with a network of over 1,000 training centres. The remaining 44 participants did not engage in any test preparation at the time. Teaching to the test led to a half a band rise in IELTS scores above the gain from test repetition alone, suggesting that the training was effective. Importantly, the IELTS gain did not generalise to the other measures of English ability; the groups performed similarly on all other language tests at both times. This suggests that test-specific, curriculum-narrowing courses could be inflating the scores with which international students apply for university places, with important consequences for test-developers, universities and students.

The Elusive Inclusive University: What Does This Look Like for Students With Intellectual Disability? An Irish Perspective

AbstractAimThis study aimed to examine the policy and system context for transition to third‐level education for people with an intellectual disability (ID), using Bourdieu's theory of reproduction as a framework, with the situation in the Republic of Ireland as a case study.BackgroundThe “massification” of higher education (HE) has resulted in ever increasing numbers of students progressing to postsecondary level education (PSE). Progressing to HE has become embedded within the normative life course and an expected transition for young adults. This article questions the extent to which the field of HE is ready for students with ID, in the context of limited capital and differing experience of the dominant habitus.MethodologyUsing the Republic of Ireland, and in particular Trinity College Dublin as the first HE institute in Ireland to offer a full‐time, 2 years course for people with ID, the access experience of people with ID is examined in the context of current national policy and system issues in the HE sector.ResultsThere is a disjuncture between the level of demand for university places and supply. In addition, the transition to third‐level education for students with ID is populated with unique challenges, which differ from peers without ID.ConclusionThis article demonstrates how such programs can highlight the extent to which the field of HE responds to the inclusion of students with intellectual disability, as well as the policy and system issues that need to be responsive to a cohort of students with differing habitus and capital, to support fully the engagement and participation of students with ID in HE. A dearth of evidence exists, and the author proposes that Bourdieu's theory of reproduction can provide a useful framework for future research.

Racial quotas in higher education and pre-college academic performance: Evidence from Brazil

The effects of affirmative action on the incentives to human capital accumulation are ambiguous from a theoretical perspective and the scarce empirical evidence on the matter provides mixed results. In this paper, we address this issue by investigating the impacts of Brazil’s Law of Quotas on the students’ performance in the college entrance exam, the ENEM. The law established that a specific share of places in Brazilian federal universities should be filled by non-white students from public high schools. We employ a difference-in-differences approach in order to estimate the effects of the implementation of these quotas on the ENEM scores and provide causal evidence that the law fostered incentives to pre-college human capital accumulation. Moreover, the effects of the quotas were greater in more quantitative- intensive subjects but were not different by gender or parental education, and these impacts increased throughout the first years after the law’s implementation.

Using Cartographies to Map Time and Space in Teacher Learning in and Outside School

This article explores the relations between teachers’ visual cartographies and oral narratives to better understand the spatial and temporal relations on teacher learning. It builds on a research project whose main questions were: 1) How and where do secondary school teachers learn to teach? 2) What are the consequences of this learning in their pedagogical relations and their students’ learning processes and results? Since narrative research has been a common way of approaching the subject and have led to an emphasis on learning as a journey across contexts and over time, some of its contributions to explore teachers’ learning paths are theoretically discussed, and visual methods, particularly cartographies, are also examined. Furthermore, the article presents the analysis of cartographies and video recordings of 29 secondary school teachers focusing on the interactions in different spaces and moments in time described by them. Findings suggest that learning to be a teacher may happen in interactions with objects, people and spaces beyond the boundaries of school, university and formal places of training and learning. They also show that the rhizomatic character of the cartographies may not prevent teleological thinking or the idea that any kind of learning is purposeful. Finally, this paper concludes that teachers’ learning does not fit the representational frame that distinguishes between formal contents and leisure activities, classrooms and private spaces, lessons and bodies, emotions and knowledge.

RPS Scotland calls for more university places to tackle pharmacist shortages

RPS Scotland calls for more university places to tackle pharmacist shortages

Private Schools and Queue-jumping: A reply to White

Abstract John White defends the UK private school system from the accusation that it allows an unfair form of ‘queue jumping’ in university admissions. He offers two responses to this accusation, one based on considerations of harm, and one based on meritocratic distribution of university places. We will argue that neither response succeeds: the queue-jumping argument remains a powerful case against the private school system in the UK. We begin by briefly outlining the queue-jumping argument, before evaluating White's no-harm and meritocracy arguments.

'Holding the door open' for continuing education in the UK: Strategies for survival until its time comes again.

Higher education (HE) in the UK, as in other parts of the world, is now big business, with revenues measured in the many ?billions annually. Organisational and cultural changes that have accompanied this 'new world' for HE represent the rise of a 'business model' of the university that is far more engaged with income generation than in the even relatively recent past. However, while increases in tuition fees have not put off young people from applying for and taking up university places, mature student recruitment has dropped precipitously. Alongside this, commitments to community and lifelong models of learning have fared badly. Continuing education services, for example, are not well positioned to contribute significantly to their host universities' income streams. The trends accompanying these changes have also affected notions of skills acquisition and even how 'learning' itself is conceptualised. This paper briefly considers the historical trajectory of continuing education as well as potential strategies that might be mobilised to make its position in the modern university more secure.

Transformative Learning: Developing Agency, Independence and Promoting a Strong Sense of Self in Teen Mothers

Adolescents who become pregnant during their secondary education experience a range of challenges that intersect and limit their opportunities to complete schooling and take up university places. One approach to addressing this issue at an Australian regional university is through the Tertiary Preparation Pathway (TPP) which has been delivered within the Supporting Teenagers with Education, Mothering, and Mentoring (STEMM) program, since 2008. The STEMM program offers teen mothers an opportunity to continue or re-engage with education during and beyond pregnancy. Adopting an intersectionality lens, interviews with adolescent mothers identified three key elements underpinning the success of the TPP/STEMM program: recognising the educational aspirations of teen mothers, developing agency and independence and promoting a strong sense of self. This article aims to provide practical implications for educators wishing to establish or develop programs based on this transformative teaching.

Is a university degree still a worthwhile financial investment in Australia?

Since 2006 there have been significant changes in the labour market for university graduates, most notably the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and the subsequent downturn in gross domestic product growth, and a huge expansion in university places. This article presents estimates of the monetary returns in Australia associated with the completion of bachelor degrees in 2016 for a range of fields of study and compares them to the estimates for 2006. The results show that for the median person, there are still good monetary incentives to complete these degrees and the private rate of return compares favourably with the long-term real bond rate. However, the article also concludes that the return to an individual investing in bachelor education had mostly declined in the period 2006–2016. There is, again, considerable variation between disciplines and for some, completion of a bachelor degree does not yield positive returns. The key factors determining the monetary rate of return are the discipline of the degree and the graduates’ subsequent labour force status. Graduates in full-time employment in most disciplines avoided being among those with low (or negative) rates of return. In addition, there is some evidence of skills mismatch and over skilling among the lowest paid university graduates.

No extra university places in Wales planned

No extra university places in Wales planned

No extra university places for children’s and learning disability nursing planned in 2020

No extra university places for children’s and learning disability nursing planned in 2020

Assessing Higher Education Policy in Brazil: A Mixed Oligopoly Approach

Abstract Higher education is increasingly provided by both public and private universities, in particular in the developing world. Considering a mixed oligopoly setting and inspired by the Brazilian context, we explore the relative merits of some frequently used higher education policies in a context where a high-quality public university interacts with a lower-quality private university. We calibrate the model to match relevant values of Brazilian earnings and educational distribution. Subsidising private university tuition fees increases participation, but many high ability students remain excluded, especially if the subsidy is substantial. Affirmative action improves the surplus associated with the public university system, as more high ability individuals attend the public university, but virtually does not increase higher education participation. Although an expansion of public university places induces a reduction in private university fees, total university enrolment grows slowly, and many high-ability individuals cannot obtain a university education.

Environmental parameters and analysis of crowd flow in an academic building of a university

Academic buildings are the main gathering places in universities and colleges. The crowd flow could cause a change in environmental parameters of buildings. In other words, the change in environmental parameters in buildings can be somewhat reflective of the crowd flow. Therefore, field measurements of the crowd flow and environmental parameters in an academic building at a university were conducted in this study. During the periods of 7:30–8:00 and 13:20–13:50, the average speed of the crowd was the highest, which was about 1.2 m/s; the CO2 concentration was low, which was about 750 ppm. In the periods of 9:20–9:50 and 15:10–15:40, the average speed of people walking in the opposite directions was the lowest, which is 0.42 m/s; however, the CO2 concentration could reach 1800 ppm. Test results showed that the variations of CO2 concentrations were inversely related to the average speed of the crowd in the evacuation passage, except for the periods of 7:30–8:00 and 13:20–13:50. Spatial separation and physical separation could be used in the management of personnel flow in the academic building. The results may provide reference for the management of the crowd flow in similar academic buildings of other universities.

Reversing the gaze, insiders out, outsiders in: Stories from the ivory tower and the field

ABSTRACT Western field-based university research places considerable value on objectivity and distancing researchers from the researched. This proves difficult in circumstances where research is long-term and its acceptable designs replicate colonial structures. Our work is rooted in the practice of consciousness raising. Our findings are twofold. First, participating in the practice of consciousness raising allowed us to see that we were “outsiders” in the neoliberal university. It made visible the commonality we had with the researched. We refer to this as a politics of identification. Second, our stories demonstrate the impracticality and weaknesses of the a-spatial, a-temporal and a-relational underpinnings of western-colonial methodology. Our stories highlight the importance of time, space, and relationships in the practice of research. Embracing the politics of identification enabled us to challenge the dominant ethos of objectivity, decrease our feelings of isolation, and embrace long-term “loving attachments,” which extended the depth and resonance of our work.

Situating decolonization: An Indigenous dilemma

Being Indigenous and operating in an institution such as a university places us in a complex position. The premise of decolonizing history, literature, curriculum, and thought in general creates a tenuous space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to confront a shared colonial condition. What does decolonization mean for Indigenous peoples? Is decolonization an implied promise to squash the tropes of coloniality? Or is it a way for non-Indigenous people to create another paradigm or site for their own resistance or transgression of thinking? What are the roles of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in this space of educational potential, this curriculum called decolonization? This article presents a multi-vocal reflection on these and related questions.

COMPETITION FOR UNIVERSITY PLACES AND PARENTAL TIME INVESTMENTS: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM

Across the industrialized world college‐educated parents invest more time in their children relative to noncollege‐educated parents. Yet, the reason for the education gradient in parental time investments is not well understood. Using 24‐hour diary surveys since the 1970s we document an inverse U‐shape in the education gradient in the United Kingdom. Theories unfolding gradually and monotonically cannot easily explain this pattern. Using an exogenous increase in the number of students going on to university in the 1980s, we show that an alternative explanation based on competition for university places can explain the temporal and spatial variation in the education gradient. (JEL J13, J24)

Saudi female students’ motivations to study in Australia: A qualitative study

Many transient Saudi Arabian students arrive in Australia annually; more than 5000 new Saudi students enrolled in 2017 to join thousands of tertiary students already in Australia. This article specifically explores the motives of Saudi female international students (SFIS) for leaving Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to study in Australia. Data were analysed and evaluated in terms of the ‘push–pull explanation’ of motivation. Salient push elements included the lack of university places and courses for women in KSA, the influence of close relatives (especially male) and Saudi governmental policies. Pull elements included the safety and tolerance of Australia being perceived to be greater than any other western country, Australia’s excellent education system and the relative convenience and ease of Australia’s admission process. The study is significant as it is the first that aims to understand Saudi females’ motivations for studying overseas, especially in Australia.