The retreat from widening participation? : the National Scholarship Programme and new access agreements in English higher education

This article critically analyses the impact of reforms to the student financial support system in English higher education. Comparative analysis of financial support mechanisms and patterns of outreach engagement with groups underrepresented in higher education show a marked deterioration in the levels of cash support available and an increasingly focus on the brightest poor students (in the form of merit aid) at the expense of the generality of poorer students since the new support programme came into place. This can be seen as part of a wider policy shift away from generic widening participation to the targeting of specific cohorts to raise the attainment level of intakes or to meet recruitment shortfalls. The findings are located in a context of a (near) trebling of tuition fees, stagnation in overall student numbers and the promotion of market mechanisms, all of which can be seen as a challenge to the notion of social justice through the higher education system

Access, participation and capabilities: Theorising the contribution of university bursaries to students’ well-being, flourishing and success

For the last 10 years, universities in England have been expected to offer financial support to low-income students alongside that provided by government. These bursaries were initially conceived in terms of improving access for under-represented groups, but attention has turned to their role in supporting student retention and success. This paper reports on two qualitative studies undertaken by contrasting universities that have been brought together due to their complementary findings. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a total of 98 students. Students’ views on bursaries and how they impact on their lives are reported and used to develop a descriptive model of the web of choices that students have in balancing finances and time. This is contextualised within Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’, to argue that providing access to higher education is insufficient if disadvantaged students are not able to flourish by participating fully in the university experience

Social identification, widening participation and Higher Education: Experiencing similarity and difference in an English red brick university

In 2012, the UK government introduced the National Scholarship Programme - a scheme that aimed to ensure that young people from families with low household incomes would not be discouraged from entry into higher education by increases in tuition fees. Drawing on longitudinal evidence in the form of eighty semi-structured interviews conducted in an English Red Brick University over a three-year period, this paper uses Jenkins’ work on social identification to examine the process es by which these post-2012 undergraduates used and experienced the financial support made available to them as part of the Programme. The paper explores how the initially categorical label associated with being a student in receipt of financial assistance was variously understood and experienced as they moved through their degree. Not only did the additional finance allow students to avoid excessive part-time work, recipients also felt increasingly valued by the institution when they began to recognise how their financial circumstances differed from their peers, and that the university had made this provision for them. It remains to be seen whether these, more intangible, benefits of non- repayable financial support will transfer to the system of ‘enhanced’ loans that have subsequently replaced maintenance grants and the National Scholarship Programme

System differentiation in England: the imposition of supply and demand

This chapter describes changing state and sector policy in relation to differentiation and how it has emerged in the English HE context: specifically, the attempts to concentrate the highest qualified applicants and the most prestigious institutions in a 'premium' market segment; the significance of the growing involvement of private providers; and the rise of the ‘student-as-consumer’ and 'value for money' in recent government policy discourse (e.g. the White Papers Students at the Heart of the System (DBIS 2011a) and Success as a Knowledge Economy (DBIS 2016). The chapter situates the development of a market hierarchy (in the form of a vertical differentiation of institutions, Archer 2007) following the demise of the university-polytechnic binary system in 1992 (Further and Higher Education Act, HMSO 1992). This co-existed for several years with the institutional diversity often celebrated by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (e.g. HEFCE 1994; 2000) that can be conceptualised as the horizontal differentiation of valued types of higher education provision and provider (e.g. part-time or vocationally orientated). The introduction of market mechanisms, in various stages beginning with the 2004 Higher Education Act (DfES 2004) and the introduction of variable tuition fees, coincided with the publication of institutional league tables from 2005. Taken together, these have reinforced a hierarchical system in which all institutions and courses are henceforth differentiated only by reference to a set of criteria dominated by the entry requirements demanded, and the amount of research carried out by the institution. Given the implications of the most recent legislation – the Higher Education and Research Act (HMSO 2017) this hierarchy is likely to be matched by one signalled by tuition fee levels, as new cheaper 'challenger' institutions come to the market

Comparing and learning from English and American higher education access and completion policies

England and the United States provide a very interesting pairing as countries with many similarities, but also instructive dissimilarities, with respect to their policies for higher education access and success. We focus on five key policy strands: student information provision; outreach from higher education institutions; student financial aid; affirmative action or contextualisation in higher education admissions; and programmes to improve higher education retention and completion. At the end, we draw conclusions on what England and the US can learn from each other. The US would benefit from following England in using Access and Participation Plans to govern university outreach efforts, making more use of income-contingent loans, and expanding the range of information provided to prospective higher education students. Meanwhile, England would benefit from following the US in making greater use of grant aid to students, devoting more policy attention to educational decisions students are making in early secondary school, and expanding its use of contextualised admissions. While we focus on England and the US, we think that the policy recommendations we make carry wider applicability. Many other countries with somewhat similar educational structures, experiences, and challenges could learn useful lessons from the policy experiences of these two countries

Relaciones entre la Asociación Profesional y la Academia. Notas desde la Universidad Nacional

Una amplia mirada al avance de la Terapia Ocupacional en Colombia permite identificar dos sustentos organizacionales básicos: la Asociación Profesional y la Academia. Desde los años 70, se han ido conjugando esfuerzos conjuntos para establecer relaciones mutuas que, de forma simultánea, han impulsado el desarrollo de una profesión joven

European Task Force on plasma wall interaction, present avtivities and future plans

This chapter discusses how Nancy Fraser’s theory of two-dimensional participatory justice may be employed in research concerned with inequalities within higher education. The main concepts of Fraser’s theory are discussed and evaluated in the light of the critical attention they have attracted. Following that, I demonstrate the empirical application of Fraser’s ideas through discussion of extracts of data from a recent small-scale investigation undertaken within a UK-based higher education institution. Finally, I conclude by discussing the strengths of Fraser’s concepts with some indications for future research