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.
