Access agreements, widening participation and market positionality: enabling student choice?

This chapter presents an alternative view of marketised higher education form much of this volume: not only does it focus on how HEIs use marketing strategies to position themselves ethically in relation to competing HEIs of the same type; it also uses the concept of widening participation (WP) as a specific arena of institutions' marketing strategies and discusses the impact on student choice. It will locate evidence for increasing market positionality among HEIs within both marketing theory and in the historical development of widening participation policy in the English HE sector. More specifically this chapter will discuss how Office for Fair Access (OFFA) access agreements came to reflect the marketing positionality of institutions. It will present an analysis of bursary and additional support regimes and types of outreach activities that reveals a tendency for more prestigious and less prestigious institutions to engage in quite different forms of widening participation activity. It will conclude that, paradoxically, the increasingly sophisticated use of widening participation as an arena for market differentiation reduces rather than increases applicants' ability to make informed choices given the complexity of student support arrangements

OFFA Access Agreements, bursaries and 'fair access' to higher education - opening up a new front in the WP wars?

There is a growing body of evidence to support the notion that that English higher education institutions (HEIs) are using the new bursary schemes outlined in Access Agreements (lodged with the regulatory Office for Fair Access, OFFA), designed to widen participation by helping students from poor backgrounds to access higher education, primarily to promote enrolment to their own programmes rather than to promote HE generally. As a consequence of this use of access agreements to sharpen institutions' marketing focus, pre-92 and post-92 institutions perpetuate the differences between HEI types in relation to widening participation and fair access leading to both confusion for consumers and inequitable distribution of support to the detriment of marginal applicants to HE. This is in tune with a general perception that, as the preamble to the 2009 Higher Education Summit in February noted: "The Higher Education sector is becoming increasingly stratified and funding changes increasingly mean that no institution can deliver to all students. All institutions must choose their future and unique University Selling Points"

Trajectories of higher education system differentiation: structural policymaking and the impact of tuition fees in England and Australia

This article explores the impact of student self-financing systems on inequalities of access to higher education (HE) through comparative analysis of two national systems, those of England and Australia. The analysis of the historical development of HE in each nation identifies a set of comparative global themes: the expansion of higher education in response to the needs of the national economy; globalisation and the changing labour market; social pressures for equity in access to higher education; and the growing role of the central state in higher education. The article presents a discussion of system differentiation based around the following characteristics: tuition fee and bursary regimes; institutional autonomy; institutional diversity; the strength of equity arguments; and the role of the state in widening participation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the often complex interactions between these characteristics and aims to add to our understanding of the impact of student self-financing regimes on trajectories of system differentiation and on access and participation

Variable tuition fees and widening participation: the marketing of English institutions through access agreements

This paper argues that the introduction of access agreements following the establishment of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has led to changes in the way that higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves in the marketplace in relation to widening participation. However, the nature of these access agreements has led to obfuscation rather than clarification from the perspective of the consumer. This paper analyses OFFA's 2008 monitoring report and a sample of 20 HEIs' original 2006 and revised or updated access agreements (2008) to draw conclusions about the impact of these agreements on the notions of 'fair access' and widening participation. The authors conclude that institutions use access agreements primarily to promote enrolment to their own programmes rather than to promote HE generally. As a consequence of this marketing focus, previous differences between pre-92 and post-92 institutions in relation to widening participation and fair access are perpetuated leading to both confusion for consumers and an inequitable distribution of bursary and other support mechanisms for the poorest applicants to HE.</p

How can the concepts of habitus and field help us to understand the engagement of educational workers in higher Education?

In ‘Making a European area of lifelong learning a reality’, the EU stressed the role of universities in relation to lifelong learning, a role that entails a need for widening access to universities, particularly for those not coming through the traditional direct route of upper secondary education. As teachers play a significant role in the quality of the lifelong learning as well as in motivating future generations to take part in lifelong learning, education and training for teachers becomes important; not only in relation to initial teacher education, but also in relation to a continuous development of knowledge and skills. This paper represents the first stage of a larger comparative project intended to examine and compare educational workers’ (i.e. professionals involved in teaching in the class room) participation in higher education in England and Denmark, their access and interest. In particular, the paper relates participation and engagement to national and international educational policies and frames this work within an examination of the social background of the professional groups. The key research questions at this stage of the work are methodological and can be summed up by the overarching question, “How can the concepts of habitus and field help us to understand levels of engagement of educational workers in Higher Education”? The paper reports the results of our review of current policies and our efforts to identify the structural relations within the educational professional fields in each country. To do so we are developing a theoretical model using the relational analytical approach advocated by Bourdieu. As such, our work is an early stage attempt at operationalising Bourdieu’s observations regarding the dynamics of field. This seems to us to provide an important conceptual approach to understanding the habitus of educational workers in the context of the dynamics of a fast changing policy arena and the complexities of the backgrounds of individuals working in the educational field. The model attempts to build in the reflexivity that Bourdieu demands for a ‘science’ that is not weakened by over-emphasis on either the objective structural relations or the subjective phenomenology of experience. Thus, the paper presents a preliminary contextual analysis of the factors that enable an understanding of engagement or lack of engagement in higher level learning among school-based education workers in the two EU countries and is related to a larger research project that explores habitus (both individual and collective) among these groups of education workers

Complement deficiencies limit CD20 monoclonal antibody treatment efficacy in CLL

Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) form a central part of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) treatment. We therefore evaluated whether complement defects in CLL patients reduced the induction of complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) by using anti-CD20 MAbs rituximab (RTX) and ofatumumab (OFA). Ofatumumab elicited higher CDC levels than RTX in all CLL samples examined, particularly in poor prognosis cohorts (11q− and 17p−). Serum sample analyses revealed that 38.1% of patients were deficient in one or more complement components, correlating with reduced CDC responses. Although a proportion of patients with deficient complement levels initially induced high levels of CDC, on secondary challenge CDC activity in sera was significantly reduced, compared with that in normal human serum (NHS; P&#60;0.01; n=52). In addition, a high CLL cell number contributed to rapid complement exhaustion. Supplementing CLL serum with NHS or individual complement components, particularly C2, restored CDC on secondary challenge to NHS levels (P&#60;0.0001; n=9). In vivo studies revealed that complement components were exhausted in CLL patient sera post RTX treatment, correlating with an inability to elicit CDC. Supplementing MAb treatment with fresh-frozen plasma may therefore maintain CDC levels in CLL patients with a complement deficiency or high white blood cell count. This study has important implications for CLL patients receiving anti-CD20 MAb therapy

P 139 Serum dramatically enhances orientation and migration of cultured bovine corneal epithelial cells in an applied electric field (EF)

Digitalitzat per Artypla

Vapor Sensing Characteristics of Nanoelectromechanical Chemical Sensors Functionalized Using Surface-Initiated Polymerization

Surface-initiated polymerization has been used to grow thick, uniform poly(methyl methacrylate) films on nanocantilever sensors. Cantilevers with these coatings yielded significantly greater sensitivity relative to bare devices as well as relative to devices that had been coated with drop-cast polymer films. The devices with surface-initiated polymer films also demonstrated high selectivity toward polar analytes. Surface-initiated polymerization can therefore provide a straightforward, reproducible method for large-scale functionalization of nanosensors

A biomechanical evaluation of the combined elevation test

Objectives: To biomechanically evaluate the relationships between the outcome of the Combined Elevation Test, its component joint motions, and thoracic spine angles. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Laboratory. Participants: 18 elite swimmers and triathletes (11 males and 7 females). Main outcome measures: Combined Elevation Test outcome in forehead and chin positions. Individual joint contributions to test outcome. Results: No sex differences were found in test components, or between head positions. Test outcome was greater in the forehead position than the chin position (34.3 cm vs 30.2 cm; p0.05). Conclusions: The Combined Elevation Test is an effective screening tool to measure upper limb mobility into shoulder flexion and scapula retraction in both sexes, and thoracic extension in women. It is recommended that the test be performed in the forehead position. If a subject performs poorly on the test, follow up assessments are required to identify the impairment location