Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Abstract

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and 'massification' of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour's programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse -of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive -can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.

‘Why not you?’ Discourses of widening access on UK medical school websites

“…This study examined how the value of WA is communicated by UK medical schools via the discourses on their WA webpages. We identified the dominance of an approach that emphasises the value of WA to an individual's receipt of social justice and mobility, which is perhaps not unexpected given the prominence of individualism within the UK's current neoliberal approach to higher education . However, it is perhaps surprising how strongly this discourse overpowers the counter‐discourse of the value of WA for the improvement of service provision and patient care, especially given the increasing presence of this argument internationally …”

“…We identified the dominance of an approach that emphasises the value of WA to an individual's receipt of social justice and mobility, which is perhaps not unexpected given the prominence of individualism within the UK's current neoliberal approach to higher education. 15,70,71 However, it is perhaps surprising how strongly this discourse overpowers the counterdiscourse of the value of WA for the improvement of service provision and patient care, especially given the increasing presence of this argument internationally. 8,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] Institutional discourses reinforce institutional values and structures, and vice versa.…”

Exploring ethnic differences in the post-university destinations of Russell Group graduates

“…Given that privileged social backgrounds have been found to be beneficial in and of themselves on the labour market (Wakeling, 2005;Wilkins and Burke, 2013), we also present the average marginal effects of ethnic origin on the probability of being in each of the five post-graduation destinations, specifically for those from higher ( Figure 4) and lower ( Figure 5) social class backgrounds. This comparison is especially important given issues linked to skills selectivity and mismatch for immigrant parents (Li and Heath, 2016).…”

The will to include – education for becoming a desirable citizen

“…As Fejes (2006) argues, lifelong learning can be seen as a liberal technology for governing. He illustrates that the language that is used in a discourse is an expression of power, where 'all' is defined as certain groups, i.e., those that are considered capable of participating in lifelong learning (see also, e.g., Berglund 2008;Lindblad and Popkewitz 2001;Wilkins and Burke 2015). Groups that are constructed as incapable of personal responsibility, lacking in motivation and not meeting the conditions enshrined in the lifelong learning discourse are excluded.…”