Widening access to university has become a major component of education policy in the past few decades, particularly in the UK and Europe. The aim is to make a university education more accessible for people from traditionally under-represented backgrounds and to ensure student bodies reflect the diversity of wider society. This key volume presents, for the first time, a critical analysis of the 'business of widening participation' in a marketised context, featuring contributions from some of the major academic and practitioner researchers in the field. Encompassing how WP policy (as a subset of HE policy) is made, enacted and implemented at various stages, also presented are multiple professional and cultural perspectives on how WP is experienced and understood by those enacting policy.

Chapter authors explore how the two aspects of the 'business of widening participation' work together to shape how WP is understood and done, as well as the possibilities for doing otherwise by employing a dual usage of the term 'business' in relation to WP. The first, figurative, usage explores the ways in which WP has been drawn into institutional positionality as HE providers differentiate themselves in the market; the second, literal, usage explores the ways in which WP policy is actuated by HE providers (including 'alternative' providers and FE colleges), state actors and third sector and private organisations increasingly engaged in the delivery of WP interventions and as policy stakeholders in this field. Offering both a comprehensive policy history of widening participation in UK higher education and exploration of how that policy has translated into institutional practices in different contexts, this timely work offers new analysis to academics familiar with the field whilst also offering sufficient background to practitioners who may be less familiar with the historical context and academic debates around WP.

About the Author

Colin McCaig is a Professor of Higher Education Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written extensively on widening participation policy in the context of marketised HE systems. He has 20 years' experience evaluating government-funded education programmes. Key recent publications include: The marketisation of English Higher Education: a policy analysis of a risk-based system, Emerald Publishing 2018; Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: A New Level Playing Field? (Co-edited with Bowl and Hughes, Palgrave 2018); Who are we Widening Participation for? BERA Research Intelligence No.143 2020; 'Higher Education, Widening Access and Market Failure: Towards a Dual Pricing Mechanism in England' Soc. Sci. 2019 (with Nic Lightfoot)

Jon Rainford is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Associate in Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation at The Open University and as an independent widening participation consultant. He has over 12 years experience of working with marginalised groups in education and completed his PhD at Staffordshire University in 2019 which focused on widening participation policy and practice. He has written numerous publications on widening access and has a particular interest in the way technology can be embedded in a post-pandemic world.

Ruth Squire is a researcher and former widening participation practitioner, with 15 years' experience in delivering and evaluating widening participation activity in higher education and the third sector. She has published articles on practioner-led research, working-class student representation and on evaluation practices and she has a particular interest in practitioner-led evaluation and policy enactment. Her current research focuses on the role of the third sector in widening participation policy and on networks and expertise in policymaking.

Reviews

The contention of this lively collection of essays is that WP has become part of the 'normal business' of HE providers during the past 25 years. This is a lively account of the drivers of WP since the Dearing Review and the implementation of the social justice policies since that time. There is extensive use of policy documents from Government bodies such as HEFCE and OFFA as well as the academic literature, enabling a focus on the sometimes discordant relationship between Government, still the primary funder of undergraduate HE in England and autonomous, but dependent, universities. This highly readable book will be of great interest and value to policy makers, practitioners, researchers and historians of widening participation as well as to the many thousands of graduates who have benefitted from opportunity not afforded to those who went before.

-- Professor Sir Les Ebdon CBE DL, Former Vice- Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and Former Director of Fair Access to Higher Education. Chair of NEON (the National Educational Opportunity Network)

This is an exciting, must-read, timely and thoughtful collation of historical and contemporary insights of what it means to increase participation in a neoliberal market system. A stellar cast of policy and academic voices make sense of the dynamics of markets, businesses, student choice and widening participation. The book is essential for those already working in English HE in policy or academic roles related to widening participation. Those in continental European systems and elsewhere who are wondering what the outcomes of shifts from public to market funded higher education might mean must look no further than this book to understand the impact on students and providers.

-- Professor Anna Mountford-Zimdars is academic Director of the Centre for Social Mobility at the University of Exeter



Book Information
ISBN 9781800430501
Author Colin McCaig
Format Hardback
Page Count 284
Imprint Emerald Publishing Limited
Publisher Emerald Publishing Limited
Weight(grams) 451g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 17mm