Tag: participation

  • How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    How commuter students show up in new access and participation plans

    When the Office for Students included commuter students in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR), it recognised the risk that commuter students may not always get the same experience as their “traditional” residential peers.

    The second wave of access and participation plans (APPs) for 2025–26 to 2028–29 have slowly been published and in the wake of the EORR’s inclusion of commuter students, we’ve got a better sense of the steps providers are taking to make the experience more equitable.

    Taking Universities UK’s member list as the sample and searching variations of the phrase “commuting student” in the currently available wave two APPs, 44 out of 81 APPs (at the time of writing) referred to commuter students in some form.

    Sometimes this was a simple statement of demographics, for example, “over 86 per cent are commuters,” or a statement of intention – “increase… work with commuting and mature students.” Other plans detailed comprehensive work to reduce inequities with various interventions, projects and additional research to undertake.

    Some plans referred to commuters broadly in a literature review but did not link this to their local contexts, and as such were not included in our analysis.

    Definitions

    As part of our ongoing series about commuter students, convened with Susan Kenyon at Canterbury Christ Church University, one challenge when discussing support for commuters is working out if everyone is talking about the same thing.

    The EORR sets out that commuter students referred to students “based on the distance or time [students] take to travel from their accommodation to their place of study” – but it then goes on to note there are many definitions, referencing both time and distance and the fact of not having re-located for university.

    In the absence of a sector-wide definition, providers have had to work this out themselves.

    The majority of plans that referenced a definition identified commuters as students whose home address matches their term time address, who had been recruited locally or still lived in their family home. Some plans used a distance to identify commuters, for example 15+ miles into their main campus base. When using distance as a criteria it opens up the possibility of a commuting student also being a student who has relocated to university but lives further away due to cost and housing pressures.

    As we’ve seen earlier in the series, there are differences in the experience based on those who chose to commute versus those who do so out of necessity.

    St Mary’s University in Twickenham explored using the Office of the National Statistics’ Travel to Work Areas maps to define commuters and setting an average travel time of 15 minutes or more (using public transport) from a term time address. They explicitly noted they had investigated the impact of using different definitions of commuter students when analysing student outcomes which led them to identifying commuters as their sixth risk category.

    When identifying commuters in APPs, ten plans went into detail about the intersecting characteristics of this demographic of students. One provider noted that “commuter students are more likely to be Asian, black or from IMD Q1+2 than non- commuter students” – this is something Kulvinder Singh looked at earlier in the series. There were several links between the association of being a commuter and being from an underrepresented group such as a mature student, carer or from a geographical area of deprivation.

    One provider interrogated whether being a commuting student was a direct factor on student outcome metrics and opted that it, in fact, coincided with other risk factors.

    Mind the gap

    For plans that had identified a risk to the commuter student experience, a brief thematic analysis suggests continuation, completion and student outcomes metrics were most prevalent in the sample followed by cost (and transport costs) and its subsequent impact on belonging.

    A lack of flexible timetabling was highlighted several times as a structural challenge for commuting students and plans honed in on the preciousness of commuters’ time.

    Bridging the gap

    Many universities plan to implement student centric timetables to tackle barriers to engagement and include plans to inform students as early as possible about scheduled classes. Flexible modes of learning, better communication methods and early timetables then further reduces peak-travel commuting costs, easing financial pressures.

    A handful of universities offer pre-arrival events and bursaries, aimed at improving commuter student access. At Manchester Metropolitan University, for example, an introductory module to support students preparing for university was particularly valued by commuting students.

    Interventions also emphasised the importance of space, with providers reviewing physical and virtual facilities, creating dedicated spaces to study and relax and improving the visibility of existing commuter spaces. The University of York’s APP suggested a provision of subsidised accommodation on campus to support commuters to engage in evening and social events.

    Peer mentoring programmes, social prescribing, and the creation of commuter student networks are examples of belonging-based interventions. York St John University’s plan proposed social opportunities each month and drop-ins for commuters to be held as often as weekly on campus.

    Many plans recognised a need to better understand the commuter student population. This often manifested as a commitment to engage or set up working groups and projects. Some providers viewed additional research as a first step toward supporting commuters, while others built on existing work and recognised that ongoing consultation offered the best way to deliver support.

    As many of these plans have started to, counting commuters, recognising their experience is geographical and making them visible is the first step to service design with commuter students in mind. Our series has been exploring ways to support their experience through making space, pedagogy, data, shifting institutional thinking and transport agendas that may inspire providers ready to take the next step.

    This blog is part of our series on commuter students. Click here to see the other articles in the series.

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  • The End of Participation Growth

    The End of Participation Growth

    One of the things that I find extremely worrying about higher education policy these days is that we’ve simply stopped talking about increasing access to the system. Oh, sure, you will hear lots of talk about affordability, that is, making the system cheaper—and hence arguments about the correct level of tuition fees—but that’s not the same. Even to the extent that these things did meaningfully affect accessibility (and it’s not at all clear that they do), no one phrases their case in terms of access anymore. We don’t care about outcomes. And I do mean no one. Not students, not governments, not institutions. They care about money, cost, all sorts of things—but actual outcomes with respect to participation rates of low-income students? At best, they are a rhetorical excuse to mask regressive spending policies which benefit the rich.

    This is a problem because it now seems as though the process of widening access, a project which began after World War II and has been proceeding for seven decades. And yet, as some recently-released Statistics Canada data shows, participation rates are now actually in decline in Canada. And it’s mainly because growth at the bottom has stalled.

    Below is the chart StatsCan released last month. It shows the post-secondary enrolment rate for 19-year-olds, which I will henceforth refer to as the “part rate” or “participation rate,” both for the entire population (the dotted red line) and by income quintile.

    Now, the first thing you may notice is that there are some pretty big gaps between the participation rates of youth from rich and poor families; the top quintile does not quite attend at double the rate of the lowest quintile, but it’s close. And you might be tempted to say, “Hey, I’ve taken Econ 101—That must be because of tuition fees!” Except, no. These kinds of part-rate disparities are pretty common internationally, regardless of tuition fees. Here are postsecondary enrolment rates by income quintile from the United States, which, on the whole, has higher fees than Canada:

    And here’s a similar chart from Poland, which mostly offers education tuition-free:

    And here’s one from France, where public universities are tuition-free but students are increasingly heading to the fee-paying private sector:

    I could go on, country-by-country, but I will spare you and instead point you to this rather good paper doing a cross-national analysis across over 100 countries by OISE’s Elizabeth Buckner. Trust me, it’s the same story everywhere.

    But let me point out what I think are the two important points in that chart. The first is that the red dotted line, which represents the participation rate of all 19-year-olds, basically plateaued back in about 2014, the first year it broke the 59% and is currently headed downwards. This is a huge change from the previous period, 2000-2014, when overall participation rates rose from 46% to 59%. First growth, now stagnation.

    The second is that during the growth period, the biggest strides were being made at the bottom end of the income scale. The part rate gap between top and bottom quintiles fell from 38 percentage points in the early 2000s to about 32 percentage points in 2014, even as part rates for the wealthiest quintile increased. That is to say, more of our growth came from the bottom than from the top. That’s good! But the growth stopped across all income quintiles and went gently into reverse for the top four income quintiles.

    Now, you might think that it’s not a bad thing that participation rates peaked, that maybe we were in a situation where we were overproducing postsecondary graduates, etc. Who knows, it’s possible. I don’t know of any evidence that would suggest that 57-59% of the youth population is some kind of hard maximum, but if stipulating that such a maximum exists, then it might well be in this range.

    But since it’s quite clear that this overall plateauing of participation is happening entirely by way of freezing educational inequality at substantial levels, being OK with the present situation means being OK with major inequalities, and in any democracy which wishes to remain a democracy, that’s not really OK. It is true that, as I noted earlier, disparities are the global norm, but that doesn’t mean you don’t keep up the struggle against stasis. It might be the case that there is some kind of “natural barrier” to keep the country’s PSE part rate at 57-59%, but in what world does a “natural barrier” keep those rates at 75% for rich kids and 43% for poor kids?

    Increasing access overall and narrowing rich-poor access gaps is incredibly difficult. If it were as simple as making tuition free, we’d have it licked in no time, but countries with free tuition don’t have noticeably narrower part rate gaps than those that charge fees. Achieving these gaps requires a whole suite of policies to narrow educational achievement gaps as well as financial ones, to offer young people a variety of flexible program types rather than an inflexible academic monoculture and to ensure that advice and support exist for students not lucky enough to be able to access the kinds of cultural capital available to the top quintile.

    As I say, achieving success in this area is very difficult: solutions are neither easy nor quick. But what makes the problem even more intractable is ignoring it the way we are doing right now. Are we a country that actually cares about equal opportunity? Or is that just a myth to which we genuflect when we wish to pretend to be more socially progressive than Americans? I lean towards option #2 but would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.

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  • Access and participation is a political question

    Access and participation is a political question

    The question of how we drive access to and participation in higher education among non-traditional groups is intimately linked to the broader question of why we are doing it.

    Accordingly, there are different approaches across the UK. Whereas in the English system the focus is on outreach (partnerships between universities and schools), in Scotland and Wales there is a lot more interest in measuring and shaping university recruitment from underrepresented groups.

    From a purely instrumental perspective there is clearly value in doing both. It is entirely possible that universities and schools could be doing more to encourage able young people to consider universities, and that there are barriers and complexities within the admissions and recruitment process (not to mention the financial, social, and academic challenges of being a student once you get in) that could be usefully addressed.

    The politics of why different approaches have emerged in different places are fascinating. At first though, you might think that a right-of-centre approach would be tied in with the economic benefits of maximising workforce skills and a left-of-centre ideology might be considering utility beyond income generation. Or – for that matter – that the right would foster individual aspirations with the left focused on societal needs.

    But it actually seems to come down to how you think people become intelligent.

    Hardwired

    In his recent book Hayek’s Bastards, Quinn Slobodian characterises the world view of what we might loosely call the postmodern right as “hard borders, hard money, and hardwired human nature”. It’s clearly a politics of status anxiety – but more specifically it has a bearing on higher education policy.

    By “hardwired human nature”, Slobodian is pointing towards something that – at one outer extreme – underpins the confusing resurgence of beliefs in eugenics. These are beliefs in the primacy of nature (your genetic heritage) over nurture (the conditions under which you matured) in developing personal attributes, some of which may be described as “intelligence”. Actual scientists tend to agree that both nature and nurture are likely to have a bearing on your life chances, and empirical evidence tends to back this up. But this comes with a huge asterisk, in that it is very difficult to unpick the two experimentally or with any degree of accuracy.

    If your personal viewpoint tends towards nature, it makes sense to argue that too many people are going to university in that there will be some people that will “naturally” not be able to benefit from the experience. You could point to a declining graduate premium (the “extra money” a graduate will earn over the course of their life) or a lower proportion of graduates working in “graduate jobs” if you wanted evidence that we are currently educating people to degree level who are not able to benefit from it.

    That’s not to say that such evidence is compelling – a sustained and welcome rise in the value of the national minimum wage and rapid changes in the kinds of jobs graduates (and everyone else, for that matter) do offer a counternarrative that sees such “declines” as evidence of a more equitable society and the value of jobs beyond salary or personal benefit.

    Tell them that it’s human nature

    As a sector that is explicitly setting out to improve the skills and life chances of young people, most people working in education tend to lean towards nurture as the major contributing factor to observed intelligence. From this position stems any number of initiatives that aim to make university study accessible, livable, and achievable to people who would not have otherwise gotten involved. If anyone can benefit from university education, surely the right thing to do is to help them.

    From a nature perspective this all looks very odd. Sure, there may be some people who don’t usually go to university that might benefit from such schemes – but applications are merit based anyway. You get in by getting good grades, or interviewing well, or having a good portfolio. When we start flexing these requirements, don’t we devalue the entire experience? Isn’t higher education what we need to be offering the top end of an intelligence hierarchy?

    This might also have to do with the quality of our tools. How confident can we be that the tests we have are indicative either of innate talent or the potential to benefit from education? Indeed, there is cause to wonder whether intelligence itself is measurable (IQ tests being a superb measure of a person’s ability to complete IQ tests, A levels being a great indicator of how middle class your background is).

    If we think our standard entry requirements are perfect, the focus should be on supporting people (both in terms of capability and aspiration) to achieve these before they apply to university. Indeed, recent English system efforts in widening participation have focused on programmes that do things like this (schools partnerships for example) rather than contextual admissions (where students from particular backgrounds are given different entry requirements reflecting their life chances thus far).

    Other peoples children

    Politically, contextual admissions are controversial because of where they sit on the nature and nurture spectrum. They explicitly recognise the difficulties that some groups face in achieving the standard requirements, and modify these requirements (alongside offering additional support).

    The pushback on this seems to me to be because of the perception that university education – or education at certain kinds of university – is a scarce resource (perhaps it once was, but the last few UCAS cycles suggest otherwise). If people who do not hold traditional entry qualifications are allowed to enter universities, it stands to reason that others that do hold the qualifications may not be able to.

    So we are back to status anxiety, in that the perception is that some young people who would otherwise be almost guaranteed access to a prestigious university may no longer have such access, and the addition of students with other backgrounds will change the experience (in academic, or – frankly – social ways) for the traditional students that do get there.

    I say “perception” because in the main the expansion of many high tariff universities has been such that the idea of anyone with the right grades being unable to get in is not the threat that it once was. Again, to be blunt, there always will be people disappointed and confused about not getting into Cambridge, Oxford, medical school, or the more selective conservatoires.

    The recent Universities UK and Sutton Trust statement on contextual admissions is about clarifying and documenting practices and processes – both to help those who may benefit access what schemes exist, and to reassure those with concerns about the validity of such programmes. It won’t assuage all the concerns, but shedding light on the issue can only help. Of course, for some the mere existence of such schemes – or any suspicion that universities should be encouraged to run them – will be anathema.

    Enough?

    The elephant in this particular room is, of course, the capacity of the economy to absorb graduates. I’ve often heard it argued that there are simply too many graduates – both in terms of how this “crowds out” the benefits of being a graduate in the job market, and in terms of whether we really need all those graduates to do the jobs they are doing.

    For me, this reaches across to the hard borders end of modern right-wing political thought. If you think lots of people in online newspaper comment sections are upset about too many graduates, just ask them about how many immigrants we have! We import a vast number of graduates from overseas (and, indeed, overseas students) in order for them to take on graduate roles in the UK economy. NHS staff are the obvious example, but there are demands everywhere – from heavy engineering to biosciences, from the creative industries to staff working in professional sports.

    And a highly skilled workforce is a more productive, and thus more valuable, workforce. The economics are clear.

    There are wider benefits too. Graduates tend to be healthier and happier, meaning less pressure on public services. They disproportionally work in public services that benefit us all. They are more likely to develop high value innovations and scientific breakthroughs. More likely to start successful companies that employ others. They are generally paid more – so they spend more. They raise the value of property and businesses in their locality. They commit less crime.

    Employers, then, are generally pretty keen on access to graduates. Policy makers, and the rest of us, probably should be too. The choice appears to be more UK people going to university or more immigration – the meaningful policy conversation becomes around what people study when they get there.

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  • The UPP Foundation is launching a new inquiry into widening participation to support the government’s opportunity mission

    The UPP Foundation is launching a new inquiry into widening participation to support the government’s opportunity mission

    Twenty-five years on from Blair’s target for 50 per cent of young people to go to higher education, the Labour Party set out a new ambition to “break down barriers to opportunity.”

    The opportunity mission articulates a multi-generational challenge: to make sure that children and young people can get on, no matter what their background; to change Britain so that a child’s future earnings are no longer limited by those of their parents; and to make Britain one of the fairest countries in the OECD. It is a fundamentally important challenge, and one that will be years in the undertaking.

    Widening participation in higher education plays a huge part in this mission, and it is for that reason that the UPP Foundation has announced a major new inquiry into the future of widening participation and student success. We have launched this inquiry by publishing a short “state of the nation” summary of the key issues in 2025. Because while success in the opportunity mission would transform the shape of British society, Labour is all too aware of the differences between the optimism of Blair’s famous 50 per cent pledge and the markedly different political and economic circumstances Keir Starmer’s government finds itself in now.

    A changed landscape

    Universities and schools face significant headwinds when it comes to dismantling the gaps students face when looking to get in and get on. The HE sector is facing well-publicised and unprecedented financial challenges, with the recent rise in fees doing nothing to alleviate pressure amid rising costs. With institutions contemplating restructuring moves and the government no closer to outlining a solution for widespread mounting deficits amid heavy fiscal weather, it is hard to see universities or the government finding much bandwidth for widening participation in the near future.

    There is also no equivalent target or metric that captures the challenge in quite the same way as Blair’s. This is understandable. Part of the reason no similar metric presents itself is because widening participation is now seen as multidimensional: not just focused on access to university, but also continuation rates, graduate outcomes, and less easily quantifiable measures of success, such as student belonging and participation in the immersive elements of the student experience.

    With the number of commuter students rising to reflect different learning patterns and pathways in a diverse student population, student living arrangements are also a major part of this puzzle. As the Secretary of State alluded to prior to the general election in an address to Universities UK, modern widening participation must reach out to more of those coming from nontraditional backgrounds, and those pursuing non-linear pathways through higher education.

    A wider view of widening participation means we need a more nuanced understanding of how access to university varies along socioeconomic, geographical and other demographic lines. As today’s report outlines, the difference in progression rates to higher education between students eligible for free school meals and their peers has widened to 20.8 per cent – the highest on record. Young people in London are significantly more likely to progress to higher education than their counterparts in the North East. The continuation gap between students from the most and least advantaged backgrounds now sits at 9.4 percentage points, having increased from 7.5 in 2016–17. As one of many charities operating in this space, we come face-to-face with the scale and scope of this disadvantage gap time and again. Equality of opportunity is still some way off.

    As well as this, some are schools struggling to do as much as others to support access to HE. Polling in our new report finds that 75 per cent of teachers in London expect at least half of their class to progress to higher education, compared to just 45 per cent in the North West and Yorkshire and the North East. Similarly, 75 per cent of teachers in Ofsted Outstanding schools thought that more than half their class would progress to HE, compared to just 35 per cent in schools rated as Requires Improvement or Inadequate.

    Although the Secretary of State said in a letter to heads of institution in November 2024 that expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students was her top reform priority in HE, the long list of challenges facing this government poses the risk that widening participation becomes a footnote to the geopolitical crisis.

    What we’re doing

    Despite the difficult environment facing both universities and the government, we think this agenda is too important to be put on the back burner. We hope our inquiry will help to establish new collective goals for widening participation and student success for the years ahead.

    The current moment provides a significant opportunity to interrogate the ways in which access and participation, student finance, student experience on campus, careers guidance, and student belonging intersect. It is in the context of this opportunity that the UPP Foundation, supported by Public First, is launching this inquiry, which aims to establish a new mission for widening participation.

    Following the introductory paper, we will publish two investigations, the first focusing on the persistent widening participation problems latent in “cold spot” areas of England, and the second exploring how the university experience differs based on students’ living arrangements and economic backgrounds, with poorer students often receiving a secondary experience that contributes to lower continuation and completion rates. Cumulatively, they will shed light on what meaningful widening participation really looks like to those who need it most, and what levers can be pulled to realise this vision.

    This inquiry comes at a crucial moment. We want to help the sector, the Office for Students and the government by setting out a series of evidence-based goals, recommendations and policies which could help make the broader vision a reality, while recognising “the art of the possible” in an era of fiscal restraint. Through these recommendations we hope to see the rhetoric of the opportunity mission and the Secretary of State start to become reality.

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  • Diversifying medicine by widening participation

    Diversifying medicine by widening participation

    Medicine is an elite profession, traditionally dominated by white, male, middle- or upper-class people, frequently from medical families.

    In 2014, the Medical Schools Council (MSC) created a Selection Alliance (SA), and published Selecting for Excellence (SfE), to address inequities in access to medical degrees in the UK for those from “widening participation” backgrounds.

    Fostering Potential: 10 years on from Selecting for Excellence , published in December of 2024, reports on progress made, with welcome achievements that are testament to the commitment of the community. The report rightly notes that focus on widening access has meant support for diverse students once they commence studies has been neglected.

    Recently, medical student activism – #LiveableNHSBursary , and #FixOurFunding – have highlighted the peculiar funding situation medical students find themselves in , and the financial pressures they experience during their studies.

    Fostering Potential asserts that WP needs to be reconceptualised away from a deficit framing of individuals as lacking ambition or aptitude to excel, to understanding lack of participation as the product of systemic and institutional failures around inclusion. For me, one of the main barriers to success for students from a disadvantaged socio-economic background studying medicine is the degree was designed and developed for a financially comfortable student. Its current structure excludes students from diverse backgrounds, and part of this is financial.

    The earnings gap

    One might argue that the financial hardship experienced by student medics is the temporary cost of what will become a lucrative career. However, once qualified, doctors from a lower socio-economic background will experience an average class pay gap of £3,640. This means their degree is both harder won and less remunerative.

    Current research and initiatives on financial barriers to success mostly treat money as a discernible object that can be quantified. It is a thing we either have enough of, or not; something we earn for ourselves as individuals. Hence proposed solutions tend to focus on maximising individual students’ abilities to earn alongside studies, while recognising that lack of time due to part-time work or caring responsibilities means some students cannot take advantage of extracurricular career development opportunities.

    I find this contradictory and suggest it misses a key point – money is also a relationship; it shapes our experiences of the world far beyond how much we have. It is a condition of success, not a result of it. Developing support for a student from a financially disadvantaged background should be informed by research that explicates how poverty impacts students’ opportunities to learn and exploit the advantages higher education allegedly offers.

    A student’s-eye-view

    I lead a project at Lancaster Medical School called Medicine Success, providing funds to mitigate the hidden costs of a medical degree for students from diverse backgrounds – purchasing a stethoscope, professional attire and funding the compulsory elective.

    Five years of project evaluation data reveal much about the role money plays in students’ sense of belonging and success. A student’s-eye-view of the degree reveals how unexpected its hidden costs are, how difficult it is to cover the cost of living and studying without financial support, and how choices about career development are constrained by cost. Further, the data shows students with scarce resources are keenly aware of how wealth is a vector of exclusion and inequity shaping their experience of the degree differently to their wealthier peers:

    Receiving these funds made a massive difference as it took me by surprise how much of a financial burden studying at university was. It seems that every aspect of it requires you to spend money that you don’t have and I feel at times it’s not all inclusive (2nd year, 2024)

    Their evaluations of the funding show that money transforms our lived experience of the world, and in turn, shapes our thoughts and feelings. They explain how scarcity can impact mental health and mental bandwidth, and the funding alleviates financial anxiety and paid-work commitments so they may focus on their studies.

    But it means more than just being able to afford essentials, it means being able to participate equally and with pride in their degree in comparison to their wealthier peers. This directly impacts self-esteem and addresses feelings of unworthiness or lack of belonging.

    A good example of this is the professional attire fund:

    I know professional attire might not seem serious but not having the right attire when it’s necessary leads me to overthink about how I’m dressed and feeling insecure during sessions. It’s often to the point where instead of focusing on learning I can’t help but to think about my appearance. (1st year, 2020)

    It is well-established that class can be read through a multitude of symbols. Respondents describe how their “lower” social status feels revealed through clothing, making them feel insecure in the learning environment. Students relate having their cheap and tired-looking clothes pointed out to them by peers, others worried about wearing the same outfit every day and what that said about their finances, while some feel that their patients have less respect for their opinion when they don’t present well-dressed. Meanwhile, ill-fitting clothing and shoes also interfere with the ability to focus on studies, causing pain and making long shifts additionally exhausting.

    Widening participation initiatives that focus on belonging from a social, cultural or academic skills perspective miss this crucial element – money. One student articulates a point made repeatedly by many of their peers:

    Funds like these make students like myself feel more heard and seen and gives us the opportunity to come from a lower socio-economic background and not feel as if we don’t belong here simply due to lack of finance. It gives us the confidence and the ability to work hard for what we want as we know there is always support available for students like us. (1st year, 2022)

    Recipients of Medicine Success funding attest that financial support levels the playing field with their more privileged peers in numerous, significant, and yet, subtle ways. Providing financial support is essential to make the learning environment, social activities, and career development accessible to students from all backgrounds. Belonging is in part financial; you can’t participate fully without money.

    Wider Context

    Recent reports show that the government is making a loss on student loans due to higher interest rates . This means private lending institutions are making a profit from the scheme funded by tax-payers and graduate repayments. In Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, Andrew Sayer explains that our current political system “supports rentier interests, particularly by making the 99 per cent indebted to the 1 per cent” , in which wealthy people are less likely to earn money through paid work, but accrue wealth through financial activities. The student loans scheme is one example.

    Higher education is presented as a means of social mobility, while extracting wealth into a financial sector that shores up its and its investors power. It does so by making already poor people pay to access education but without the conditions to participate fully. The promise of breaking the cycle of poverty with a university degree is so powerful that it deflects attention from what is really happening, despite extensive evidence that education has yet to prove itself as a solution to class inequalities. For these reasons, even with WP policies, HE has financial injustice embedded within it, resulting in deleterious effects on students’ mental health, degree experiences and outcomes.

    I see this as an example of “financial trauma,” defined by Chloe McKenzie as “the cumulative effect of being required to experience economic violence, financial abuse, financial shaming, and/or (chronic) financial stress to attain or sustain material safety”.

    Social mobility is a problematic term; it requires individual people to increase their position in an established hierarchy that is itself integral to maintaining socioeconomic inequality. This is why I welcome the MSC’s push to reconceptualise improving participation as a systemic issue, not one focussed on changing individuals to fit into the status quo. At the same time, we must apply this thinking to financial barriers to success, by recognising that money is far from a private issue but a matter of justice.

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  • Five keys to success in Evaluation Capacity Building for widening participation

    Five keys to success in Evaluation Capacity Building for widening participation

    Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate is a mantra that those engaged in widening participation in recent years will be all too familiar with.

    Over the past decade and particularly in the latest round of Access and Participation Plans (APP), the importance of evaluation and evidencing best practice have risen up the agenda, becoming integral parts of the intervention strategies that institutions are committing to in order to address inequality.

    This new focus on evaluation raises fundamental questions about the sector’s capacity to sustainably deliver high-quality, rigorous and appropriate evaluations, particularly given its other regulatory and assessment demands (e.g. REF, TEF, KEF etc.).

    For many, the more exacting standards of evidence have triggered a scramble to deliver evaluation projects, often facilitated by external organisations, consultancies and experts, often at considerable expense, to deliver what the Office for Students’ (OfS) guidance has defined as Type 2 or 3 evidence (capable of correlative or causal inference).

    The need to demonstrate impact is one we can all agree is worthy, given the importance of addressing the deep rooted and pervasive inequalities baked into the UK HE sector. It is therefore crucial that the resources available are deployed wisely and equitably.

    In the rush for higher standards, it is easy to be lured in by “success” and forget the steps necessary to embed evaluation in institutions, ensuring a plurality of voices can contribute to the conversation, leading to a wider shift in culture and practice.

    We risk, in only listening to those well placed to deliver large-scale evaluation projects and communicate the findings loudest, of overlooking a huge amount of impactful and important work.

    Feeling a part of it

    There is no quick fix. The answer lies in the sustained work of embedding evaluative practice and culture within institutions, and across teams and individuals – a culture that imbues values of learning, growth and reflection over and above accountability and league tables.

    Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) offers a model or approach to help address these ongoing challenges. It has a rich associated literature, which for brevity’s sake we will not delve into here.

    In essence, it describes the process of improving the ability of organisations to do and use evaluation, through supporting individuals, teams and decision makers to prioritise evaluation in planning and strategy and invest time and resources into improving knowledge and competency in this area.

    The following “keys to success” are the product of what we learned while applying this approach across widening participation and student success initiatives at Lancaster University.

    Identify why

    We could not have garnered the interest of those we worked with without having a clear idea of the reasons we were taking the approach we did. Critically, this has to work both ways: “why should you bother evaluating?” and “why are we trying to build evaluation capacity?”

    Unhelpfully, evaluation has a bad reputation.

    It is very often seen by those tasked to undertake it as an imposition, driven by external agendas and accountability mandates – not helped by the jargon laden and technical nature of the discipline.

    If you don’t take the time to identify and communicate your motivations for taking this approach, you risk falling at the first hurdle. People will be hesitant to invest their time in attending your training, understanding the challenging concepts and investing their limited resources into evaluation, unless they have a good reason to do so.

    “Because I told you so” does not amount to a very convincing reason either. When identifying “why”, it is best you do so collaboratively and consider the specific needs, values and aspirations of those you are working with. To those ends, you might want to consider developing a Theory of Change for your own ECB initiative.

    Consider the context

    When developing resources or a series of interventions to support ECB at your institution, you should at all times consider the specific context in which you find yourself. There are many models, methods and resources available in the evaluation space, including those provided by organisations such as TASO, the UK Evaluation Society (UKES) or the Global Evaluation Initiative (BetterEvaluation.org), not to mention the vast literature on evaluation methods and methodologies. The possibilities are both endless and potentially overwhelming.

    To help navigate this abundance, you should use the institutional context in which you are intending to deliver ECB as your guide. For whom are you developing the resources? What are their needs? What is appropriate? What is feasible? How much time, money and expertise does this require? Who is the audience for the evaluation? Why are they choosing to evaluate their work at this time and in this way?

    In answering these and other similar questions, the “why” you identified above, will be particularly helpful. Ensuring the resources and training you provide are suitable and accessible is not easy, so don’t be perturbed if you get it wrong. The key is to be reflective and seek feedback from those you are working with.

    Surround yourself with researchers, educationalists and practitioners

    Doing and using evaluation are highly prized skills that require specific knowledge and expertise. The same applies to developing training and educational resources to support effective learning and development outcomes.

    Evaluation is difficult enough for specialists to get their heads around. Imagine how it must feel for those for whom this is not an area of expertise, nor even a primary area of responsibility. Too often the training and support available assumes high levels of knowledge and does not take the time to explain its terms.

    How do we expect someone to understand the difference between correlative and causal evidence of impact, if we haven’t explained what we mean by evaluation, evidence or impact, not to mention correlation or causation? How do we expect people to implement an experimental evaluation design, if we haven’t explained what an evaluation design is, how you might implement it or how “experimental” differs from other kinds of design and when it is or isn’t appropriate?

    So, surround yourself with researchers, educators and practitioners who have a deep understanding of their respective domains and can help you to develop accessible and appropriate resources.

    Create outlets for evaluation insight

    Publishing findings can be daunting, time-consuming and risky. For this reason, it’s a good idea to create more localised outlets for the evaluation insights being generated by the ECB work you’ve been doing. This will allow the opportunity to hone presentations, interrogate findings and refine language in a more forgiving and collaborative space.

    At Lancaster University, we launched our Social Mobility Symposium in September 2023 with this purpose in mind. It provided a space for colleagues from across the University engaged in widening participation initiatives and with interests in wider issues of social mobility and inequality to come together and share the findings they generated through evaluation and research.

    As the title suggests, the event was not purely about evaluation, which helped to engage diverse audiences with the insights arising from our capacity building work. “Evaluation by stealth,” or couching evaluative insights in discussions of subjects that have wider appeal, can be an effective way of communicating your findings. It also encourages those who have conducted the evaluations to present their results in an accessible and applied manner.

    Establish leadership buy in

    Finally, if you are planning to explore ECB as an approach to embedding and nurturing evaluation at an institutional level (i.e. beyond the level of individual interventions), then it is critical to have the buy in of senior managers, leaders and decision makers.

    Part of the why for the teams you are working with will no doubt include some approximation of the following: that your efforts will be recognised, the insights generated will inform decision making, the analyses you do will make a difference, and will be shared widely to support learning and sharing of best practice.

    As someone who is supporting capacity building endeavours you might not be able to guarantee these objectives. It is important therefore to focus equal attention on building the evaluation capacity and literacy of those who can.

    This can be challenging and difficult to control for. It depends on, among other things: the established culture and personnel in leadership positions, their receptiveness to new ideas, the flexibility and courage they have to explore new ways of doing things, and the capacity of the institution to utilise the insights generated through more diverse evaluative practices. The rewards are potentially significant, both in supporting the institution to continuously improve and meet its ongoing regulatory requirements.

    There is great potential in the field of evaluation to empower and elevate voices that are sometimes overlooked, but there is an equal and opposite risk of disempowerment and exclusion. Reductive models of evaluation, preferencing certain methods over others, risk impoverishing our understanding of the world around us and the impact we are having. It is crucial to have at our disposal a repertoire of approaches that are appropriate to the situation at hand and that fosters learning as well as value assessment.

    Done well, ECB provides a means of enriching the narrative in widening participation, as well as many other areas, though it requires a coherent institutional and sectoral approach to be truly successful.

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  • Fun with Participation Rate Data

    Fun with Participation Rate Data

    Just a quick one today, mostly charts.

    Back in the fall, StatsCan released a mess of data from the Labour Force Survey looking at education participation rates—that is, the percentage of any given age cohort that is attending education—over the past 25 years. So, let’s go see what it says.

    Figure 1 shows total education participation rates, across all levels of education, from age 15 to 29, for selected years over the past quarter century. At the two ends of the graph, the numbers look pretty similar. At age 15, we’ve always had 95%+ of our population enrolled in school (almost exclusively secondary education, and from age 26 and above, we’ve always been in the low-tweens or high single digits. The falling-off in participation is fairly steady: for every age-year above 17, about 10% of the population exits education up until the age of 26. The big increase in education enrolments that we’ve seen over the past couple of decades has really occurred in the 18-24 range, where participation rates (almost exclusively in universities, as we shall see) have increased enormously.

    Figure 1: Participation rates in Education (all institutions) by Age, Canada, select years 1999-00 to 2023-24

    Figure 2 shows current participation rates by age and type of postsecondary institution. People sometimes have the impression that colleges cater to an “older” clientele, but in fact, at any given age under 30, Canadians are much more likely to be enrolled in universities than in colleges. Colleges have a very high base in the teens because of the way the CEGEP system works in Quebec (I’ll come back to regional diversity in a minute), and it is certainly true that there is a very wide gap in favour of universities among Canadians in their mid-20s. But while the part rate gap narrows substantially at about age 25, it is never the case that the college participation rate surpasses the university one.

    Figure 2: Participation Rates by Age and Institution Type, Canada, 2023-24

    Figure 3 shows college participation rates by age over time. What you should take from this is that there has been a slight decline in college participation rates over time in the 19-23 age range, but beyond that not much has changed.

    Figure 3: College Participation Rates by Age, Selected Years, 1999-2000 to 2023-24

    Figure 4 uses the same lens as figure 3 only for universities. And it’s about as different as it can be. In 1999, fewer than one in ten Canadians aged 18 was in university: now it is three in ten. In 1999, only one in four 21 year-olds was in university, now it is four-in-ten. These aren’t purely the effects of increased demand; the elimination of grade 13 in Ontario had a lot to do with the changes for 18-year-olds; Alberta and British Columbia converting a number of their institutions from colleges to universities in the late 00s probably juices these numbers a bit, too. But on the whole, what we’ve seen is a significant increase in the rate at which young people are choosing to attend universities between the ages of 18 and 24. However, beyond those ages the growth is less pronounced. There was certainly growth in older student participation rates between 1999-00 and 20011-12, but since then none at all.

    Figure 4: University Participation Rates by Age, Selected Years, 1999-2000 to 2023-24

    So much for the national numbers: what’s going on at the provincial level? Well, because this is the Labour Force Survey, which unlike administrative data has sample size issues, we can’t quite get the same level of granularity of information. We can’t look at individual ages, but we can see age-ranges, in this case ages 20-24. In figures 5 and 6 (I broke them up so they are a bit easier to read), I show how each province’s university and college participation rates in 2000 vs. 2023.

    Figure 5: University Participation Rates for 20-24 Year-olds, Four Largest Provinces, 2000-01 vs. 2023-24

    Figure 6: University Participation Rates for 20-24 Year-olds, Six Remaining Provinces, 2000-01 vs. 2023-24

    Some key facts emerge from these two graphs:

    • The highest participation rates in the country are in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.
    • In all provinces, the participation rate in universities is higher than it is for colleges, ranging from 2.5x in Quebec for over 4x in Saskatchewan.
    • Over the past quarter century, overall postsecondary participation rates and university participation rates have gone up in all provinces; Alberta and British Columbia alone have seen a decline in college participation rates, due to the aforementioned decision to convert certain colleges to university status in the 00s.
    • Growth in participation rates since 2000 has been universal but has been more significant in the country’s four largest provinces, where the average gain has been nine percentage points, and the country’s six smaller provinces, where the gain has been just under five percent.
    • Over twenty-five years, British Columbia has gone from ninth to second in the country in terms of university participation rates, while Nova Scotia has gone second to ninth.
    • New Brunswick has consistently been in last place for overall participation rates for the entire century.

    Just think: three minutes ago, you probably knew very little about participation rates in Canada by age and geography, now you know almost everything there is to know about participation rates in Canada by age and geography. Is this a great way to start your day or what?

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  • Trump Signs Executive Order to Ban Transgender Student-Athletes from Participation in Women’s Sports

    Trump Signs Executive Order to Ban Transgender Student-Athletes from Participation in Women’s Sports

    by CUPA-HR | February 11, 2025

    On February 5, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The order aims to bar transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports by directing agencies to withdraw federal funding from schools that refuse to comply with the order.

    The EO claims that, in recent years, educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports, which the Trump administration believes denies women and girls equal opportunity to participate in competitive sports, thus violating Title IX. As a result, the EO sets policy to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities” and to “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly.”

    With respect to the specific actions ordered, the EO directs the secretary of education to ensure compliance with the court order to vacate the Biden administration’s Title IX rule and to take other actions to ensure that the 2024 regulations do not have effect. It also directs the secretary to take action to “protect all-female athletic opportunities” by setting forth regulations and policy guidance that clearly specifies and clarifies “that women’s sports are reserved for women.”

    Notably, the EO further directs all federal agencies to review grants to educational programs and to rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with policy set forth in the EO. Institutions with grant programs deemed to be noncompliant with this order could, therefore, risk losing federal funding for that program.

    The EO also seeks quick enforcement by federal agencies. The EO orders the Department of Education to prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions and athletic associations that “deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events.” The Department of Justice is also tasked with providing resources to relevant agencies to ensure “expeditious enforcement” of the policy set forth in the EO.

    Finally, the EO directs the assistant to the president for domestic policy to convene both major athletic organizations and state attorneys general to promote policies consistent with Title IX and identify best practices in enforcing equal opportunities for women to participate in sports.

    On February 6, the NCAA updated its policy regarding transgender student-athlete participation in response to the EO. According to the NCAA, the new policy limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth, but it allows student-athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive benefits while practicing with them. For men’s sports, student-athletes may participate in practice and competition regardless of their sex assigned at birth or their gender identity, assuming all other eligibility requirements are met.

    Institutions should review their policies and practices in light of the EO and the NCAA’s policy change. CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for Title IX updates and keep members apprised of new enforcement under the Trump administration.



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  • Is going to university still worth it? A widening participation student’s view

    Is going to university still worth it? A widening participation student’s view

    By David Lam, Activities Officer at the Students’ Union Bath.

    As a child, I always envisioned a very traditional educational journey. I would work my way through high school, do my A levels and then end up at a good university, graduating into a well-paid job. I think this is the journey most undertake or are pointed towards as we were told that university students almost always earn more than those without one. It’s a no-brainer, right?

    However, there have been recent conversations about the value of going to university and getting a degree. Being a student is tough right now, because:

    Despite these challenges, record numbers of students from TUNDRA 1 (lowest participation) backgrounds have made it to university. A remarkable stat! But why has this happened? I believe university opens so many more opportunities for you besides a good education and, for this reason, people would prefer to earn and learn rather than not doing it at all.

    Going to university allows you to access a whole load of new experiences through societies and sports clubs at a relatively low cost and without much commitment. At Bath, there are over 200 groups that you can join, ranging from common interests like football and board games to more niche ones like sailing and gliding. I am sure there are equally wide offers at other universities. Having gone to a state school, I never had the opportunity to try all these things while others from more privileged backgrounds did. 

    Studying at Bath meant I had access to a wide range of placements for my year in industry. Without the wonderful placement team showing me all the world had to offer, I would not have known where to start, nor would I have ever considered doing a placement.  I had always seen movies that involved people going for the best year of their life abroad in a sunny place, making friends for life and being temporarily free from studying. I decided I wanted that experience too, but then the Covid-19 Pandemic hit, meaning my opportunities suddenly shrank. Despite the setback of a global pandemic, I eventually found an opportunity and I ended up working in Madrid as a Physical Education (PE) teacher in an international school. It was the best year of my life, living the dream I’d seen on TV, thanks to my university’s placement team’s support.

    Attending university exposes you to people from diverse backgrounds. Coming from a small town in the Midlands, predominantly made up of white British residents, I was one of only three kids of colour in my entire primary school. So arriving in Bath and encountering people who looked like me was a strikingly different experience. Some of my closest friends come from all over the world and, yes, eventually when we all leave Bath, I will be visiting them at some point! The chances of me making such friendships would have been minimal had I stayed in my little town and I would have nowhere near as enlightened an understanding of other cultures as I have now.

    University is often the first real taste of freedom for many, marking the transition from life at home to living independently. You are no longer surrounded by an endless supply of clean clothes or home-cooked meals; instead, you are managing your own routine and life, all within the relatively safe university environment. This shift into the big wide world fosters resilience and builds people skills. You will inevitably encounter challenges, like that one housemate who never does their dishes. But part of the university experience is learning to handle these issues yourself, having the tough conversations and solving problems independently rather than relying on someone else to step in. Along the way, you will meet both amazing people and those who are not so great. While no degree teaches you how to interact with others, living with a diverse group of people forces you to learn those essential skills.

    For these reasons, I still believe there is value in going to university. While not everyone’s experience is the same, the underlying benefits remain. The university experience represents a beacon of opportunity and opens so many doors. It leads to things you would have never imagined doing, like living in another country for a whole year or writing a blog for a higher education think tank. Seeing the Office for Students turn its attention to the wider student experience, rather than exclusively to education, is welcome. I believe more places should be taking this holistic view and I look forward to seeing what their new strategy comes out with it.

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  • Widening participation students have much to teach us

    Widening participation students have much to teach us

    When co-creating with under-represented groups, the most important element for success is a relational approach.

    We need to embody core values – such as respect, inclusivity, fairness and consideration – in order to ensure that collaborators have a safe space which allows them to thrive.

    Care experienced students have support needs which are often not well understood by the teams who are in place to help. By co-creating resources with local college students who have experience of the care system, we were able to help to provide our tutors with guidance to help them in their support role.

    As the number of young people in care in the UK increases and universities face regulatory pressure to enable access and participation in higher education, we will see more students with care experience entering higher education.

    So it is vital that universities empower them to overcome the obstacles they have already faced and help them achieve their best outcomes.

    Myths and realities

    Although it is a myth that care-experienced young people are more likely to end up in prison than in university, the reality is still that the outcomes for care experienced young people are not good.

    The Care Leavers Association produced a report in 2015 advising that while children in care and care leavers account for less than 1 per cent of the population, over 25 per cent of the adult prison population has previously been in care.

    This, when contrasted with data from the Office for Students, which tells us that in 2018-19 only 13 per cent of pupils who were looked after for 12 months or more, entered higher education compared to 43 per cent of all other pupils, is a glaring call to action.

    Our local authority, Devon, has pledged to add care experience as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, as recommended by an independent review into children’s social care. This should go some way to ensuring that young people with care experience are protected from discrimination.

    Care experience as expertise

    Our recent initiative focused on ways of working with care-experienced young people, not just as participants but as expert colleagues, whose insights and lived experiences would be integral to the project’s success.

    The relational approach that informed our planning exceeded our hopes, allowing us to create a truly collaborative environment where both the young people and our academic community benefited profoundly and meaningfully.

    The local authority approached the university about work experience opportunities, and our team of two set about designing a week-long suite of mutually beneficial skills-shares and development opportunities. The care experienced individuals who joined us were invited as experts.

    They were studying at local colleges, but have considered university in the future. At the time of the work experience week they were aged 18 – 19. We had not set any parameters for the local authority, our intention being to work with individuals who wanted to take up our offer. These young adults brought invaluable perspectives that informed the creation of resources to improve the support offered to care-experienced students.

    Their contributions were not just helpful—they were essential, producing outcomes that would have been impossible without their input. This was not a one-sided effort but a partnership in which their voices were central to the development process.

    The week in motion

    The week was carefully designed to be balanced, trauma-informed, and safe. It wasn’t about providing generic work experience but about creating a bespoke environment where each young person could belong, see and feel that they mattered, and then identify and pursue their own developmental goals with confidence.

    The rooms, resources, colleagues, and plans were all designed to facilitate a relaxed and respectful collegiate atmosphere.

    We began with talk (and coffee): co-creating and sharing a space to talk and to share experiences, expertise and aspirations.

    The subsequent self-assessment exercises, such as SWOT analyses and personal development plans, allowed the care experienced people to reflect from a place of safety and to articulate their strengths, areas for growth, and personal objectives for the week and beyond.

    Mutual benefits

    This self-directed approach ensured that they were not only contributing to the university’s resources but also advancing their own skills and confidence. The care experienced people became educators, delivering presentations and engaging in microteaching sessions for staff. These opportunities allowed for the young people to refine their communication skills, build their confidence, and further establish themselves as knowledgeable contributors.

    Throughout the week, we prioritised creating a safe and supportive environment. Trust was foundational to the initiative, enabling the young people to fully engage and showcase their expertise and talents.

    We deliberately involved colleagues from various departments and used different spaces across the campus, which helped to familiarise the young people with the university setting and adding to their cultural capital. We approached colleagues who shared our approach towards fully inclusive and respectful collaboration to run workshops and facilitate ideas sharing. This relational pedagogy – centred on trust, respect, and mutual learning – allowed for a rich exchange of knowledge and skills.

    The resources produced during this week were nothing short of exceptional. Covering topics such as finance for care-experienced students, trauma-informed tutoring, and the traits of a supportive tutor, these materials are now invaluable assets for our Academic Personal Tutors.

    Such resources are polished, professional, and most importantly, deeply rooted in the lived experiences of care-experienced individuals. The impact of these resources will be felt across the university, enhancing the support we provide to care-experienced students in a way that truly reflects their needs.

    The week culminated in a resource-showcase, which was attended by academics and professional services colleagues from across the university, as well as external stakeholders.

    This was a special moment, for all involved: either observing or being our colleagues-for-the-week, mingling at the showcase tables to talk about their design rationale and why supporting the care leaver agenda is so important. It was an event that helped to highlight to the young people the quality and significance of the resources that they had developed.

    Success

    The feedback that we received from the young people matched our aspirations for the week: they felt supported, empowered, efficacious.

    The success of this initiative has inspired us to expand the model. We plan to repeat the experience with other care-experienced young people and extend it to work alongside other underrepresented groups.

    Our goal is not only to support those already within our institution, but also to demonstrate that higher education is a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone. By continuing to adopt a relational approach that values the contributions of all students as expert colleagues, we can create a more equitable and supportive academic environment.

    This initiative was a sobering reminder that the messages that society tells young people about their potential become their inner voice.

    It was also testament to the power of collaboration, mutual respect, and the genuine belief that every student, regardless of their background, has the potential to belong in, and contribute to, the academic community. We must remember that while we work to support widening participation students, they also have much to teach us.

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