Discourses of ‘Fair Access’ in English Higher Education: What do institutional statements tell us about university stratification and market positioning?

Hughes, Jonathan; Bowl, Marion

doi:10.5456/wpll.15.4.7

Cited by 19 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Higher status institutions could focus their WP efforts on activities intended to ameliorate the impact of student fees, offering generous bursaries to targeted groups of students (McCaig & Adnett 2009;McCaig 2011). They could also focus their outreach efforts on high-achieving potential students, creating competition over a small number of socially disadvantaged but suitably qualified young people, as noted by analyses of access agreement statements, (Graham 2013;Bowl and Hughes 2013;McCaig 2015). Institutions already recruiting large numbers of WP students (and thus larger numbers of those entitled to a bursary due to their low-income backgrounds) offered less generous financial support, leading to a significant overlap between student recruitment and widening participation aims.…”

Section: The 2004 Act: Widening Participation Enters the Marketisatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst the term widening participation remained in the policy discourse as a generic descriptive term for any change in the social composition of the expanding number of students in the system (as well as 'feelgood' wider policy goal), the priorities of 'fair access' for the 'most able' were the prescribed variety of WP for those parts of the system that were concerned with maintaining the 'Global Excellence' of the UK HE brand. As noted by critical discourse analyses of the first set of OFFA access agreements after 2006 (Graham 2013, Bowl and Hughes 2013, McCaig 2011, only by offering social mobility to the selected few would pre-1992 institutions justify charging the new maximum fee. Hence, widening participation became ever more important to the differentiation of the market.…”

Section: Accelerating the Shift Towards Institutional Responsibility ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Drives Widening Participation Policy in the English Market?

McCaig¹,

Squire²

2022

The Business of Widening Participation: Policy, Practice and Culture

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This chapter provides the context for understanding how English widening participation policy has interacted with the development of a marketised and expanding higher education system (the 'dual imperative' highlighted in the Introductory chapter of this volume). It traces the intensification of market approaches in higher education since 1997, examining how these interact with and become intertwined with evolving national widening participation policy concerns. Since 1997, widening participation for underrepresented groups as a national policy aim has become firmly embedded in the activities undertaken by higher education providers (HEPs). Policy initiatives have moved between incentive and risk to encourage HEPs to address national and local inequalities of access and (later) student success and differential graduate outcomes. This chapter gives an overview of the key policy moments in this period and argues for how they have shaped the way in which the business of WP is enacted throughout the sector. It highlights how the business of WP drawn widely has become simultaneously a regulatory requirement, a way for institutions to differentiate themselves in the HE market and a key marker of institutional civic or social responsibilities. Situating this alongside the increasing focus on students and applicants as consumers, the chapter also begins to problematise the issues of collaboration and competition this creates.

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Section: The 2004 Act: Widening Participation Enters the Marketisatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accelerating the Shift Towards Institutional Responsibility ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Drives Widening Participation Policy in the English Market?

McCaig¹,

Squire²

2022

The Business of Widening Participation: Policy, Practice and Culture

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“…This is because the focus and method of the analysis were developed in a separate but related small study conducted during the first term of my doctoral research. The method is informed by other studies which use critical discourse analysis as an approach to analysing the ways that HE is represented in documents such as institutional mission statements (Bowl and Hughes, 2013), access agreements, (McCaig, 2015), educational news supplements (Leathwood, 2013) and marketing campaigns (Farber and Hom, 2005;Graham, 2013;Symes and Drew, 2017). Each of these studies takes the position that public-facing documents such as these both reflect and shape the ways that HE is discursively understood.…”

Section: Documentary Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Local students in higher education cold spots: placed possible selves and college-based higher education

Henderson

2020

Journal of Vocational Education & Training

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This thesis explores experiences of college-based higher education (CBHE) in England, positioning this type of provision within the national and local geographies of English higher education. Focusing on institutions located in higher education 'cold spots', the thesis situates these institutions within local and policy narratives of both lack of and need for educational opportunity. The case study research design examines two case institutions, and involves documentary analysis and interviews with higher education directors, tutors and final year students on two degree courses in each college, as well as interviews with key figures in national Further Education policy. Data analysis deploys the concept of possible selves in an original, sociologically-oriented dialogue with de Certeau's 'spatial story' to produce accounts of placed possible selves. The key contributions of the thesis are, firstly, that shared and homogenous societal narratives of university higher education dominate even in places and for educational subjects without university education. Secondly, the thesis challenges reductive binary understandings of student mobilities, in which mobility and privilege are diametrically opposed to immobility and disadvantage. Finally, the concept of local capital offers a way of understanding social, cultural and economic commitments to place that moves beyond a language of deficit.

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“…Although there has been a number of studies concerned with the contents and contexts of access agreements (Bowl and Hughes, 2013;McCaig and Adnett, 2009;McCaig, 2015;Rainford, 2016) and syntheses of WP research (Gorard and Smith, 2006;Kettley, 2007;Sheeran et al, 2007), there has been no study that focuses specifically on how research is engaged in access agreements. In exploring the different ways that research is understood and discussed, this paper calls for greater cohesion between policy, practice and research at institutional levels to inform and influence national and international policy.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An analysis of access agreements thus presents the opportunity to think through tensions at the heart of WP discourse and practice; namely, its potential and its performance. Bowl and Hughes (2013; have argued that the highly controlled nature of the documents means that they present an ambivalent commitment to WP. Institutions maintain, Bowl and Hughes argue, an uneasy "balance between the social justice mission and operating in a global market", suggesting that what can be read presents a move "against social justice " (2013: 23).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Troubling ideas for widening participation: how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements

Wardrop¹,

Hutchings²,

Collins³

et al. 2016

Wide Particip Lifelong Learn

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This article explores how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements. Through an analysis of access agreements from 2014-15 to 2016-17, a picture of how research is understood, undertaken and documented emerges. A lexical analysis of the texts was used to establish the different ways research is being referred to or funded as part of the access agreement process. The analysis shows a productive relationship between national policy and institutional activity. But there appears to be a lack of infrastructure at an institutional and sector level to join up sustained and rigorous research with widening participation activity and policy. This means that, even after ten years of access agreements, widening participation is not fully embedded into the academic practice of higher education. We argue that research undertaken as part of the access agreement process can provide much needed evidence of impact and situate activity within an institution-wide context. However, we also suggest that widening participation research has the potential to offer productive troubling ideas to dominant rhetoric and, in so doing, shape new ways of thinking about, and doing, widening participation within institutions and across the sector.

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Discourses of ‘Fair Access’ in English Higher Education: What do institutional statements tell us about university stratification and market positioning?

Cited by 19 publications

References 5 publications

What Drives Widening Participation Policy in the English Market?

What Drives Widening Participation Policy in the English Market?

Local students in higher education cold spots: placed possible selves and college-based higher education

Troubling ideas for widening participation: how higher education institutions in England engage with research in their access agreements

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