Access to Success and Social Mobility through Higher Education: A Curate's Egg?

It is argued by many that one of the keys to social mobility lies in widening access to institutions, which educate most of the ‘elite’. In England, around 30 of the most highly selective universities are responsible for the higher education of a large proportion of those ending up in the most well-paid and powerful positions. These institutions have historically recruited most of their students from middle- or upper-class backgrounds, and still struggle to create more diverse student bodies. Investments in (so-called) widening participation (WP) have increased significantly, and institutions widely advertise their commitment to diversity. Still, increasing the proportion of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds is progressing incredibly slowly.

This chapter investigates how highly selective universities can best be held to account for their contribution to social mobility. It explores the direction of WP spending and the case for implementing a framework ensuring that institutions seek to achieve value for money. It ranks the progress of the most selective universities, and by investigating the approach taken at the most successful one, the LSE recommends a greater focus on contextualised admissions.

Nelson Mandela once argued that ‘education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world’. This sentiment is echoed by governments and citizens across the world. Education can help us to better understand the world around us and our place in it, equipping us to push for positive social, economic and political changes.

Calls for accessible Higher Education (HE) in South (and the rest of) Africa make perfect sense: a university degree is a passport to a better life for those who have it. For example, the unemployment rate for those with a university degree is significantly lower than for those without. In addition, university campuses offer more than just taught knowledge: they are a place where young people build networks, relationships and values (see, e.g. May & Jones in this volume, Chapter 5). They are where the future business, political and intellectual leaders of a country are forged.

Africa, generally, is faced with numerous serious challenges regarding access to HE, and this chapter explores some of the key ones with particular reference to South Africa.

This chapter focusses on the situation of part-time learners and explores the extent to which policy in England has confounded, rather than facilitated, lifelong learning opportunities. A brief overview of Lifelong Learning policy at Pan-European level is presented with the findings of a specific project which sought to establish what the barriers were to access for diverse student bodies in England, Denmark, Finland and Germany. Then, the authors focus on the ‘perfect storm’¹ in English Higher Education where a catastrophic decline in the numbers of part-time student, generated due to the clash of several policy ‘clouds’, raises questions about the government’s commitment to lifelong learning.

Access to higher education (HE) in rural and coastal communities has been a developing area of research over the last two decades. This chapter looks at the particular issues of access and participation facing tertiary institutions in the context of Tasmania (Australia) and New Zealand. Both locations in the southern hemisphere have particular cultural, social and geographical circumstances and are characterised by dispersed rural and regional communities over extensive geographical areas and considerable tracts of remote territory. They share strong similarities to the issues facing access and inclusion in HE in the northern hemisphere and globally.

In recent years, there have been a growing number of references to social capital, in debates about higher education (HE), by policy makers, senior institutional leaders and academics. This chapter highlights the value of social capital to both students and institutions alike, as a contributing factor to the transformational effect of HE; and as an important tool to explain the value of HE to policy makers and the public. We draw on empirical data from students articulating the value of social capital. Their voices demonstrate that social capital has a significant role to play in institutional endeavours to maximise student success.

This case study focusses on student conceptions of becoming an academic, and their perceptions of their institution’s role in supporting them, or creating barriers, on this journey. In-depth qualitative research was conducted with nine undergraduate Fine Art and Design students from a range of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and White backgrounds to understand the impact that tutor relationships; the curriculum, creative pedagogies and the invisibility of diverse teaching staff might have on their journey through, and sense of belonging within, the academy. It is positioned amid the current BAME attainment gap in UK higher education (HE) and takes as its context the discourse on the lack of BAME academics in UK universities; an issue more pronounced in the creative disciplines (ECU, 2017a, p. 158).

The aim of the study was to understand how institutional practices might support or hinder students returning to the academy as staff, using Critical-Race Theory and whiteness and cultural capital frameworks to situate the research. The findings present an overwhelming interest amongst the students in teaching as a future career, and makes a case that students’ motivations and aspirations to teach, if fostered and supported, could partially remediate the current lack of BAME staff in HE.

This study examines students’ views of the institutional learning environments, which add to their academic and social success, in a multicultural college. The relationships between the students’ background characteristics and their academic skills, self-efficacy and interactions with the academic and administrative staff are analysed utilising quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings indicate that the students encounter difficulties in their academic studies because of low attainment in academic literacy. However, students with higher self-efficacy actively seek assistance to advance their academic skills, whilst students with lower self-efficacy circumvent academic-assistance resources available on campus. Nonetheless, most students are motivated to succeed in their academic studies and continue them further.

The study concludes with recommendations for future measures to enhance students’ self-efficacy and the specific needs of students of diverse ethnic and national origin.

The correlation between social background, and future educational and occupational outcomes, is strengthening in the UK. It is getting harder to ignore the implications, as they manifest themselves in our economic and political fabric. Even when talented young people overcome barriers at a particular stage of their journey to the workplace, new barriers present themselves at the next. For example, it has been assumed historically that gaining access to university has a levelling effect: once you are in, you will get ahead. This is a myth. Those, for whom the cost of higher education is most significant, often benefit the least. This chapter explores why this is currently the case, and what can be done to narrow the gap in graduate outcomes by socio-economic background.

People with long-term experience of mental health problems can find it difficult to access higher education. The loss of confidence, social isolation and the stigma that often comes with mental ill health can make entering a university a daunting and intimidating experience. In this chapter, we consider Converge, a project which seeks to provide educational opportunities – across the campus of York St John University – to local people with mental health problems. The authors will suggest that the university environment and its people play a key role in supporting participants to learn, develop and progress. It is not medical or therapeutic interventions that make the difference, but learning within a socially valued and challenging environment.

Service-learning (SL) is an educational movement with roots in academic activism fuelled by commitments to accessibility, social mobility, social justice, community engagement, sustainable development and learning. Reviewing the voices of the original US ‘pioneers’ and contemporary practitioners over the last 30 years, this chapter argues that (1) contemporary SL has been ‘mainstreamed’ in various ways and (2) such a re-conceptualisation seems to have re-formatted educational commitments in line with contemporary economic framings and circumstances of higher education (HE). However, it also argues that beyond overt compliance and resistance, it is possible for practitioners and HE more broadly to create responses and spaces where educational adaptation and transformation can emerge. To facilitate such responses, it is important to embrace the strong driving force of passion and emotion, which can drive and sustain change agents in practice. This chapter aspires to revitalise and rejuvenate academic activism as a legitimate catalyst of educational transformation on a global platform.

This chapter outlines the development of ‘CU Scarborough’, a new campus of Coventry University Group, developed on the North Yorkshire coast in the UK. It is positioned as though it were a ‘micro university’ in and for an area of traditionally low participation in higher education – a so-called ‘higher education cold spot’. This chapter provides an overview of the project highlighting: the motivation for the development; summarising the innovative academic model being applied; tracking the rapid journey from initial concept to the first students preparing to graduate and reflecting on the impact being made to date.

This chapter presents the learning experience of a tutor at a UK university when undertaking a part-time, online degree in Health and Social Care over a seven-year period. Retrospective reflection and sociological theory are applied as methodologies to identify several key challenges faced by mature, widening participation students, involving identity, literacy, workload and assessment. The chapter suggests how an awareness of these issues helps one to empathise more effectively with mature students, the better to promote success and retention. It is suggested that other tutors stand to benefit from engaging in this type of online learning experience to further their own empathy with mature students.

Increasing diversity in higher education (HE) – or widening participation (WP) – is now a concern worldwide (Billingham in this volume, Chapter 1; Bowes, Thomas, Peck, & Nathwani, 2013; Shah, Bennett, & Southgate, 2016). However, we all know that access to HE is not sufficient; access needs to be accompanied by success – staying on the course, gaining a good degree and securing graduate-level employment. In this chapter, it is argued that in order to equalise student outcomes a ‘whole institution approach’ (WIA) is required. Evidence is drawn from two studies (each led by the author): one focussing on improving student retention and success in HE, which concluded that a WIA is required (Thomas, Hill, O’ Mahony, & Yorke, 2017, pp. 133–135). The second commissioned by the Office for Fair Access to better understand a WIA to WP (Thomas, 2017). The chapter discusses three key findings: the importance of both cultural and structural change; the role of evidence and the need for a deliberate process of change. These findings are illustrated with examples.

Higher education (HE) should be at the forefront of attempts to navigate a route through the confluence of disruptive forces affecting the world in the early twenty-fist century. The early part of the century has seen inequality, in particular, return to the fore. In its survey of over 200 global experts worldwide, the World Economic Forum (2017) stated that:

Growing income and wealth disparity is seen by respondents as the trend most likely to determine global developments over the next 10 years. (p. 11)

Growing income and wealth disparity is seen by respondents as the trend most likely to determine global developments over the next 10 years. (p. 11)

Yet, HE remains a bastion of inequality increasingly obsessed with rankings, which openly celebrate elitism in an era where elites are increasingly derided. Fostering inequality and celebrating elitism are becoming high-risk strategies in the midst of the post-crash populism of the 2010s. There are other routes open to what HE can be; safer and better ones for HE itself. However, it will take global advocacy and action if they are to be followed. This chapter presents the key evidence for, and a model, for such advocacy.