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

Paying for Higher Education in England: Funding Policy and Families

“…Research carried out in the late 1990s found that the most debt-averse students were those from the poorest backgrounds and those who are most under-represented in the student population (Callender, 2002; see also Archer et al, 2002;McCaig, 2011). However, qualitative research carried out following the 2006 changes to the student loans architecture, found that many students from lower social class backgrounds expressed positive views about debt believing it would offer them the opportunity to access higher-level careers (Harrison et al, 2015).…”

“…Tuition fee and maintenance loans and grants 2011/12 (SLC 2011a, 2011b Students who commenced a full-time higher education degree programme in 2011/12 were, if they fulfilled residential criteria, eligible for government financial support (SLC, 2011a). The tuition loan was paid directly to the university attended (maximum £3,375 per annum).…”

Rating and rewarding higher education for sustainable development research within the marketised higher education context: experiences from English universities

“…Since the 'Browne Review' (Browne 2010) of HE funding and student finance in England in 2010, which raised undergraduate student tuition fees from £3000 to £9000 per year (fees were first introduced in 1997 at £1125 per year and raised to £3000 in 2006 1 ), England's HE sector, which accounts for over 80% of the UK's HE income and student population, has entered a heightened period of marketisation. As well as the introduction of tuition fees of £9000 per year (with inflationary increases since this time), this recent amplification of marketisation is exemplified by the introduction of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (or TEF) in 2016 (to assess the quality of undergraduate teaching via a gold, silver, bronze rating scale) and, the creation of the Office for Students (OfS) 2 in 2018, all of which are championing a 'student as consumer' narrative and are putting ever-growing pressure on academic departments and HEIs, to compete for students and provide value for money (Ferudi 2011;Foskett 2011;McCaig 2011;Brown 2015).…”

Widening Participation, Aimhigher and the Coalition Government: Narratives of Freedom and Efficiency

“…It is relevant at this point to note that concerns about the nature of the student intake only began to be taken seriously during the expansion of HE in the late 1980s, and that it was not until the early 1990s, when additional funding was allocated for students from under-represented groups, that the government began to include selective HEIs in widening participation (McCaig, 2011). Subsequently, the issue has become part of the narrative of social justice, and no government would now want to be seen to oppose the idea that access to HE should be open to those who reach the required entry level -the debate centres around how, rather than if, measures relating to widening participation should be conceived and implemented.…”