Determining factors of access and equity in higher education: A systematic review

Abstract

This literature review study aims to provide an overview of influencing factors of access to and equity in higher education. In this way, the research offers insight into specific factors that support or hinder access and equity, respectively. Forty factors from thirty-three peer-reviewed articles, mostly from three continents: Europe, Australia, and America, published between 2014 and 2018, were selected for further analysis. The articles were analyzed into four organizational levels: government, university, pre-university education, and student. Most findings on this topic discuss government policies and financial support. In addition to financial support, the significance of this paper discusses social support influence (by peers, by family, by teachers, by university officers, and via programs) to improve access and equity in higher education. Social support emerged as crucial for both access and equity. This study alerts researchers, teachers, administrators at the university level, and policy-makers at the national level to focus more on social relations between peers, students, and lecturers, support by the managerial level, and establishing programs that provide basic academic skills to disadvantaged groups.

The role of social factors in access to and equity in higher education for students with low socioeconomic status: A case study from Indonesia

“…Equity addresses the fact that it might not be fair to provide all students with the same resources and support for learning (Maringe and Sing 2014) because students from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially low-SES students, need more guidance and support before and after they are accepted by the university. A literature review by Wanti et al (2022) revealed that social factors are crucial for both HE access and equity, which we explore further in the present study. Our investigation of access is especially focussed on the social factors influencing students before they are accepted by the university, while our equity focus explores the role of social factors after students have been accepted and during their learning process at the university.…”

“…Data were collected via semi-structured interviews to explore the participants’ thoughts about the topic. The interview scheme was designed based on our prior review study (Wanti et al, 2022) about access and equity in HE. Several steps were followed to build the questions for the interviews:(i) creating an overview of the determining factors of access and equity in HE from our first study;(ii) changing these factors into questions to obtain clear statements from the respondents on whether they agree or disagree with the factors; for example, ‘do you agree that family plays a role in access to HE?’.…”

“…First, all the collected responses were classified as belonging to either social factors or other factors. Based on the previous review study (Wanti et al, 2022), social factors were distinguished in the role of teachers (or lecturers), mentoring programmes, family and peers. If a particular social factor was mentioned by the respondent, a score of ‘1’ was given; if not, it received a score of ‘0’.…”

“…Prior studies of access and equity in HE have therefore mainly focussed on access, discussing this subject from a student perspective and focussing on financial support (Wanti et al, 2022). The present study examines both access and equity in HE, involving students, lecturers and university support staff to gain a broader perspective, and investigates the role of social factors in the access to, and equity in, HE, especially for low-SES students.…”

A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of Regional Balance in the Financing of Higher Education in Uganda: The Uganda Students’ Higher Education Financing Policy Perspective

“…Higher education accrues enormous benefits both to a country in general and to the individual graduate in particular (Wanti et al, 2022). This makes fair regional representation in higher education imperative.…”