The imperative of increasing access to university

The importance of the nation state in shaping the politics of the late 2010s is clear, with populist forces changing the political landscape across the world. What has driven much of this change has been the ability of politicians on the right to tap into the frustrations of those who feel left behind by globalisation and to channel them into new (and old) forms of nationalism.

Higher education, like other established institutions, is being challenged by the rise of populism. It can be argued that at present higher education is on the wrong side of the fence where populism is concerned. It is perceived as part of the elite, rather than a force to address inequality. This perception constrains what higher education can do to challenge populism and the illiberalism at its core which is antithetical to what higher education stands for.

The populist challenge means that higher education needs to take the issue of who participates far more seriously than it ever has before. The evidence suggests, though, that while this may be a promising road to go down, it is one where higher education itself may need to take the lead.

Symbolic importance

A new book released late last year, Access to Higher Education: Understanding global inequalities, looks at the position in 12 different countries across the world with regard to access to higher education. The book shows that, for most countries, widening access to higher education is a significant policy priority.

In Western systems, such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia, investment in activities to broaden the range of groups who participate in higher education is well established, but in the developing world where the priority is to increase the overall numbers of students entering higher education, there is still a concern regarding who is entering.

In India and China, where the majority of students in the world study, there are policies in place to extend access for those from particular caste groups or rural areas. While across the other continents in the world, in the countries of South Africa, Ghana and Colombia there is evidence to show who enters higher education is a priority for policy-makers.

This exploration of access across nation states shows that who participates in higher education is taking on an increasingly symbolic importance. It is becoming associated with the idea of nationhood for many countries. It is part of how they see themselves and how they wish to be seen.

The problem is, however, that the gap between rhetoric and reality is far too wide. While many of the countries want to be seen as places where opportunities to progress through education are available to all, in reality they are not. As Masani Navani states in the chapter on India, there is "considerable tokenism in the nature of the schemes available that explicitly address equity issues".

Policy-makers fail to make good on what may be enshrined in their very constitution in the case of Ghana and even, it could be argued, Finland, which is finding difficulties in coping with the shift to a multi-ethnic society. In the countries where the biggest investment has occurred and the most long-standing commitments exist, such as the US, UK and Australia, progress in reducing inequalities has been at best glacial and in the US case things have gone backwards.

Driver of inequality?

It is in this gap between what is said and done that the problem lies for higher education, and it only reinforces the perception that higher education is a driver of inequality, not a counterbalance to it. These problems are exacerbated in some cases, as the book shows, for example, in Germany, where the issue of access has yet to permeate the idea of nationhood at all.

As Julia Mergner, Shweta Mishra and Dominic Orr state: "The fact that the social selectivity of German higher education has existed for so long shows that opening access to underrepresented groups also requires a change of mindset."

Across much of Europe this complacency where inequality in access to higher education is concerned is evident. In 2009 all European countries committed to establishing targets to widen access to higher education, yet by 2015 less than 20% of these countries had done so.

The above analysis suggests that policy-makers’ role in initiating and supporting access to higher education is unreliable. It should be asked, though, why should higher education rely on policy-makers anyway? Is it not time higher education took responsibility for its own situation?

While widening access to higher education may in the past have been an option which higher education could choose or reject, it is now a necessity in the face of the populist challenge. What the book shows is the innovative, exciting work going on across the world to widen access – from access agreements which commit higher education institutions to outreach work with schools in the UK to the children’s university in Colombia and work with less endowed schools in Ghana.

These initiatives, and this agenda, requires the commitment of senior higher education leaders. That means ‘re-framing’ the arguments for widening access. It is no longer a ‘nice thing’ to do or a way of conforming to the latest policy directive. It is central to what a relevant, legitimate higher education institution means in the early 21st century. Higher education leaders who ignore this fact do so at their peril.

Dr Graeme Atherton is director of the National Education Opportunities Network in the United Kingdom, and editor of Access to Higher Education: Understanding global inequalities published in December 2016 by Palgrave MacMillan.