Investigation exposes social biases in HE participation

Doctoral education has been neglected in assessments of recruitment practices and as a result the social biases that may influence participation in doctoral education have not been addressed, according to a major investigation into the widening of participation in Swedish higher education.

These biases are also found at other levels of higher education.

The findings of the research commissioned by the Swedish government, the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) and the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR), have been published in a report in two parts on how Swedish higher education is widening participation and promoting diversity in higher education at all levels, including the doctoral level.

Part One of the report is an evaluation of the universities’ efforts in recruitment carried out by an assessment group.

The second part – the Opinions of the Assessment Group – summarises the results of the evaluation at national level, presents its conclusions and makes recommendations for improvement of participation to higher education institutions and to government.

The second part also contributes towards knowledge on participation patterns in Scandinavia and the rest of the Nordic region.

The authors of the overall report are Heléne Fröborg (lead author), Fredrik Svensson, Helen Dryler, Henrik Holmquist, Oskar Kindberg, Markus Lindström, Anna-Karin Malla, Caroline Tovatt – all from UKÄ, and Aleksandra Sjöstrand from UHR.

“Twenty years after it was written into the university law [2002] that universities shall promote broadened recruitment, the Swedish Higher Education Authority has now published an evaluation reporting on this work.

“Much is done to level out the gender differences in the recruitment to higher education but much more is done to have women recruited to education dominated by men, compared to men being recruited to higher education dominated by women,” Fröborg said in a press release.

Doctoral education

One of the key areas of concern for the assessment group was participation by under-represented groups in doctoral education.

Despite the fact that in 2020, 51% of students embarking on doctoral education were women and 40% were international students, doctoral education has generally been neglected in assessments of recruitment practices or in the self-reporting by institutions (except for the Karolinska Institute), thereby failing to address the social biases that may inform the participation of doctoral students in institutions.

For example, 5.5% of people born in 1990 and who had parents with higher education had started on a doctorate before the age of 30, while the figure was only 0.1% for those whose parents did not have higher education.

Socially biased participation in doctoral training measured in relation to the education of the parents is mirrored in recruitment to higher education in general.

Pil Maria Saugmann, a doctoral student and chair of the doctoral student committee in the Swedish National Union of Students (SFS), told University World News that issues around widening recruitment and participation in doctoral education are more subtle than suggested by the report.

Parents’ education levels

“With a 50-50 distribution between men and women, and 40% of internationals it would be tempting to say that the Swedish doctoral education has broad recruitment,” she said. However, the heavy dependence on how well-educated your parents are shows that biases do exist.

“This [issue of parents’ education] might indicate an underlying bias about who is perceived by academia to be suitable for doctoral education and what groups of students are encouraged to consider it an option. This in turn limits the diversity among researchers at all levels, which again sends a signal to future generations of students and doctoral students about who is suitable to do research.

“A risk associated with this is that groups of society can feel that they are excluded from higher education,” she said.

The report found that people who immigrated to Sweden before their seventh birthday or who are born in Sweden with two parents born abroad, are recruited in higher numbers to higher education than persons born in Sweden (after 1986).

A lower proportion of those who have immigrated to Sweden after their seventh birthday are recruited to higher education and, in this group, recruitment is lower today compared with earlier findings.

It found that 83% of people with parents with a higher education are studying beyond secondary school, compared to 23% of those with parents who only completed secondary school.

Gender and disciplines

It also found that 59% of 92,236 new recruits to higher education in 2019-20 were women and 41% men. However, participation in certain disciplines was still skewed by gender. For example, in respect of pre-school teacher education, 7% of new recruits were men while in respect of engineering, only 25% of new recruits were women.

In its analysis, the report has documented that higher education institutions understand “broadened recruitment” differently and few have a dedicated action plan to improve recruitment and-or participation practices. Furthermore, few institutions have a transparent system in place for those who are responsible for recruitment and participation profiles.

The report found that social background is a major factor in influencing how a person participates in higher education and there were major regional differences.

Interestingly, it found that socially biased recruitment to higher education had increased during the first phase of the pandemic and that dropout rates for newly recruited students increased among those parents who had low rates of higher education but not among youths with higher educated parents.

Those institutions using locally adapted recruitment strategies enjoyed greater levels of broadened recruitment, it found.

Individual profiles

Turning to individual institutions, the report found that at the Karolinska Institute, the proportion of newly recruited students who were 30 years or older was 37% compared to the national average of 30%. In addition, 53% of newly recruited students in 2016-17 were from outside Sweden, which is an increase from 39% in 2007-08. Of those starting their studies in 2017-18, 42% had parents with at least three years of post-secondary studies, slightly lower than 43% in 2008-09.

Regarding Lund University, it found the institution had 18% of new students with an international background among those recruited in 2016-17 which was an increase of 14% since 2007-08. The national average was 9% in 2016-17. Among new students in 2017-18, 50% had parents with at least three years of post-secondary education, and an increase from 45% in 2008-09.

During 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), Uppsala University had 1,400 incoming exchange students and 940 outgoing and 1,400 students paying tuition fees. The number of doctoral students was 2,228 with 44% being internationally recruited, compared to 21% in 2010. A study (2016-18) found that there were 35 applicants for each doctoral grant awarded.

Beyond a sole focus on representation

Commenting on the value of the report, Lena Adamson, associate professor of psychology at Stockholm University, told University World News that more research on dropout and retention patterns would complement the report findings.

“This is a very thorough report, also including some interesting comparisons between the Nordic countries on policy issues. However, broadening participation today seems to have a sole focus on representation; that is, a number of [many] different student groups should be equally represented in higher education.

“Originally, the issue concerned unlocking the so-called ‘talent reserve’, which, at the time, usually meant promoting students with high potential for higher education studies from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

“I believe several university teachers would agree that just to promote students from different, under-represented groups is not enough to secure quality higher education, especially considering today's problem of grade inflation at secondary school levels. A thorough report on both dropout and retention patterns would therefore possibly be a useful complement to this report.”

On 30 March, UKÄ is due to hold a follow-up conference with representatives of higher education institutions and other organisations focusing on what has been learned from the evaluation and how the sector can prepare better for the future.