Changing Policy Discourses on Equity and Diversity in UK Higher Education: What Is the Evidence?

Abstract

Widening participation in higher education (HE) became a major policy discourse in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 21st century, although it had its origins in the expansions of educational opportunity in the last third of the 20th century. As the second decade of the 21st century opened, the policy discourses around widening participation shifted towards a concern with social mobility rather than equity and diversity that underpinned previous policy agendas. This chapter considers these changing policy discourses on widening participation to HE and also reviews some of the policy evidence-base on which changes have been developed. The focus is on the social and educational research undertaken in England commissioned by the UK government to underpin the new Labour policy initiatives around the notion of widening participation or ‘fair’ access to HE (David, 2009a). All these developments have taken place in a changing socio-economic and political context, in which HE has played an increasingly important role: the so-called global knowledge economy or ‘academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004; David, 2011).