The shift to the political right in many countries in the world, including it appears the UK now, presents a new set of challenges for equitable access and success to higher education. Not that it needed any new ones. Inequalities in participation in higher education are pervasive, entrenched and low on the list of priorities of most governments. Since the early 2010s we have been working with other organisations across the world including the World Bank and UNESCO to understand the extent and nature of these inequalities but more importantly to initiate activities to address them. In 2016 working with colleagues including the late, great Geoff Whitty I undertook a project to bring together as much secondary data we could on who participates in higher education by social background across the world.
The Drawing the Global Access Map report found that in all the countries where we could find data (over 90%) higher education participation was unequal. The extent of this inequality differs but it binds together countries and higher education systems of all varieties. Following convening 2 global conferences on higher education access around the time of this report in an attempt to galvanise the global higher education community, we then launched World Access to Higher Education Day (WAHED) in 2018. The aim of WAHED was to create a vehicle that would enable universities to launch activities to address inequalities in access and success on the day in their own place. As the pandemic hit we also started a global online conference and up to 2022 over 1000 organisations from over 100 countries engaged in WAHED. We also produced research to mark the day including the All Around the World – Equity Policies Across the Globe report in 2018 which looked at policies on higher education equity in over 70 countries. The report found that only 32% of the countries surveyed have defined specific participation targets for any equity group and only 11% have formulated a comprehensive equity strategy.
WAHED played an important role as a catalyst for activism, especially in contexts where individuals or departments felt that they were acting in isolation. However, progress will be limited if efforts are restricted just to an International Day of Action. Hence, in December 2024, working again with the World Bank, UNESCO as well as Equity Practitioners in Higher Education in Australasia (EPHEA), and a number of educational foundations, we launched the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN). The aim of WAHEN is to construct an alliance for global, collective action on higher education equity and more information can be found here. It will focus on:
• Capacity Building via the sharing, professionalisation and enhancement of practice in learning, teaching and pre-HE outreach
• Collaboration – enabling organisations to formulate and deliver shared goals through a set of global communities of practice.
• Convening – bringing together those from across countries and sectors to affect change in higher education through World Access to Higher Education Day.
• Campaigning – advocating and working with policymakers and governments around the world producing research and evidence.
• Critical thinking – creating an online space where the knowledge based on ‘what works’ in equitable access and success can be developed & shared.
It was because there was a national organisation that works to tackle inequalities in higher education in the UK, the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON), that I founded and led for 13 years, that WAHED and WAHEN happened. NEON led these efforts to build a global network. There remains a large way to go for WAHEN to be sustainable and impactful. We are working intently on how to position WAHEN and how it should focus its efforts. Inequalities in access and success are locally defined. They can’t be defined from a Euro-centric perspective, and they can also only be tackled through primarily work that is regional or national. The added value of international collaboration in this area needs to be articulated, it can’t be assumed. But at the same time, nor should the default assumption be that such a network or collaboration is less required where equitable access and success is concerned than in other parts of higher education. This assumption encapsulates the very problem at hand, ie the lack of willingness to recognise the extent of these inequalities and make the changes necessary to start to address them.
The present challenges to higher education presented by the global shift to the right brings into sharp focus the consequences of a failure to deal with these inequalities. Universities and left leaning governments are unable to frame higher education as open and available to all with the potential to enter. The accusations of elitism and the threats to academic freedom etc then become an easier sell to electorates for whom higher education has never mattered, or those in their family/community. It is more important than ever then that something like WAHEN exists. It is essential that we develop the tools that give higher education systems across the world to become more equitable and to resist populist narratives, and that we do this now.
Professor Graeme Atherton is Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN) and Vice Principal, Ruskin College, Oxford.
A hybrid conference Access and Geopolitics: Next Steps in Tackling the Equity Crisis in Global Higher Education, was held on 3 June 2025 at the Department of Education in Oxford, jointly organised by WAHEN, The Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) and the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE). There were almost 40 presentations on: the politics – and geopolitics – of widening participation; the challenge of financing access; private provision and higher education as a public good; populism and the equity ‘backlash’; and, the challenge of generating meaningful participation data. Speakers included: John Blake, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, England; Dr Jamil Salmi, global tertiary education expert; Professor Shamit Saggar, Executive Director of Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success; Professor Rachel Brooks, Professor of Higher Education, Oxford and President of the British Sociological Association; Professor Johanna Waters, Professor of Human Geography, UCL; Dr James Robson, Director of SKOPE and Associate Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, Oxford; Graeme Atherton, Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN) and Vice Principal, Ruskin College, Oxford; and Danielle Watkis, DPhil student, Department of Education, Oxford. A full record of the event will soon be available on the CGHE website.
Higher education faces a pivotal moment as Generative AI becomes increasingly embedded within academic practice. While AI technologies offer the potential to personalize learning, streamline processes, and expand access, they also risk exacerbating existing inequalities if not intentionally aligned with inclusive values. Building on our QAA-funded project outputs, this blog outlines a strategic framework for deploying AI to foster inclusion, equity, and ethical responsibility in higher education.
The digital divide and GenAI
Extensive research shows that students from marginalized backgrounds often face barriers in accessing digital tools, digital literacy training, and peer networks essential for technological confidence. GenAI exacerbates this divide, demanding not only infrastructure (devices, subscriptions, internet access) but also critical AI literacy. According to previous research, students with higher AI competence outperform peers academically, deepening outcome disparities.
However, the challenge is not merely technological; it is social and structural. WP (Widening Participation) students often remain outside informal digital learning communities where GenAI tools are introduced and shared. Without intervention, GenAI risks becoming a “hidden curriculum” advantage for already-privileged groups.
A framework for inclusive GenAI adoption
Our QAA-funded “Framework for Educators” proposes five interrelated principles to guide ethical, inclusive AI integration:
Understanding and Awareness Foundational AI literacy must be prioritized. Awareness campaigns showcasing real-world inclusive uses of AI (eg Otter.ai for students with hearing impairments) and tiered learning tracks from beginner to advanced levels ensure all students can access, understand, and critically engage with GenAI tools.
Inclusive Collaboration GenAI should be used to foster diverse collaboration, not reinforce existing hierarchies. Tools like Miro and DeepL can support multilingual and neurodiverse team interactions, while AI-powered task management (eg Notion AI) ensures equitable participation. Embedding AI-driven teamwork protocols into coursework can normalize inclusive digital collaboration.
Access to Resources Infrastructure equity is critical. Universities must provide free or subsidized access to key AI tools (eg Grammarly, ReadSpeaker), establish Digital Accessibility Centers, and proactively support economically disadvantaged students.
Ethical Responsibility Critical AI literacy must include an ethical dimension. Courses on AI ethics, student-led policy drafting workshops, and institutional AI Ethics Committees empower students to engage responsibly with AI technologies.
Implementation strategies
To operationalize the framework, a phased implementation plan is recommended:
Phase 1: Needs assessment and foundational AI workshops (0–3 months).
Phase 2: Pilot inclusive collaboration models and adaptive learning environments (3–9 months).
Key success metrics include increased AI literacy rates, participation from underrepresented groups, enhanced group project equity, and demonstrated critical thinking skill growth.
Discussion: opportunities and risks
Without inclusive design, GenAI could deepen educational inequalities, as recent research warns. Students without access to GenAI resources or social capital will be disadvantaged both academically and professionally. Furthermore, impersonal AI-driven learning environments may weaken students’ sense of belonging, exacerbating mental health challenges.
Conversely, intentional GenAI integration offers powerful opportunities. AI can personalize support for students with diverse learning needs, extend access to remote or rural learners, and reduce administrative burdens on staff – freeing them to focus on high-impact, relational work such as mentoring.
Conclusion
The future of inclusive higher education depends on whether GenAI is adopted with a clear commitment to equity and social justice. As our QAA project outputs demonstrate, the challenge is not merely technological but ethical and pedagogical. Institutions must move beyond access alone, embedding critical AI literacy, equitable resource distribution, community-building, and ethical responsibility into every stage of AI adoption.
Generative AI will not close the digital divide on its own. It is our pedagogical choices, strategic designs, and values-driven implementations that will determine whether the AI-driven university of the future is one of exclusion – or transformation.
This blog is based on the recent outputs from our QAA-funded project entitled: “Using AI to promote education for sustainable development and widen access to digital skills”
Dr Eleni Meletiadou is an Associate Professor (Teaching) at London Metropolitan University specialising in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), AI, inclusive digital pedagogy, and multilingual education. She leads the Education for Social Justice and Sustainable Learning and Development (RILEAS) and the Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI) Research Groups. Dr Meletiadou’s work, recognised with the British Academy of Management Education Practice Award (2023), focuses on transforming higher education curricula to promote equitable access, sustainability, and wellbeing. With over 15 years of international experience across 35 countries, she has led numerous projects in inclusive assessment and AI-enhanced learning. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and serves on several editorial boards. Her research interests include organisational change, intercultural communication, gender equity, and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). She actively contributes to global efforts in making education more inclusive and future-ready. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-eleni-meletiadou/
Our recent study (Zhou et al, 2025) surveyed 595 undergraduate students across the UK to examine the evolving digital divide across all forms of digital technologies. Although higher education is expected to narrow this divide and build students’ digital confidence, our findings revealed the opposite. We found that the gap in digital confidence and skills between widening participation (WP) and non-WP students widened progressively throughout the undergraduate journey. While students reported peak confidence in Year 2, this was followed by a notable decline in Year 3, when the digital divide became most pronounced. This drop coincides with a critical period when students begin applying their digital skills in real-world contexts, such as job applications and final-year projects.
Based on our study (Zhou et al, 2025), while universities offer a wide range of support such as laptop loans, free access to remote systems, extracurricular digital skills training, and targeted funding to WP students, WP students often do not make use of these resources. The core issue lies not in the absence of support, but in its uptake. WP students are often excluded from the peer networks and digital communities where emerging technologies are introduced, shared, and discussed. From a Connectivist perspective (Siemens, 2005), this lack of connection to digital, social, and institutional networks limits their awareness, confidence, and ability to engage meaningfully with available digital tools.
Building on these findings, this blog asks a timely question: as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) becomes embedded in higher education, will it help bridge this divide or deepen it further?
GenAI may widen the digital divide — without proper strategies
While the digital divide in higher education is already well-documented in relation to general technologies, the emergence of GenAI introduces new risks that may further widen this gap (Cachat-Rosset & Klarsfeld, 2023). This matters because students who are GenAI-literate often experience better academic performance (Sun & Zhou, 2024), making the divide not just about access but also about academic outcomes.
Unlike traditional digital tools, GenAI often demands more advanced infrastructure — including powerful devices, high-speed internet, and in many cases, paid subscriptions to unlock full functionality. WP students, who already face barriers to accessing basic digital infrastructure, are likely to be disproportionately excluded. This divide is not only student-level but also institutional. A few well-funded universities are able to subscribe to GenAI platforms such as ChatGPT, invest in specialised GenAI tools, and secure campus-wide licenses. In contrast, many institutions, particularly those under financial pressure, cannot afford such investments. These disparities risk creating a new cross-sector digital divide, where students’ access to emerging technologies depends not only on their background, but also on the resources of the university they attend.
In addition, the adoption of GenAI currently occurs primarily through informal channels via peers, online communities, or individual experimentation rather than structured teaching (Shailendra et al, 2024). WP students, who may lack access to these digital and social learning networks (Krstić et al, 2021), are therefore less likely to become aware of new GenAI tools, let alone develop the confidence and skills to use them effectively. Even when they do engage with GenAI, students may experience uncertainty, confusion, or fear about using it appropriately especially in the absence of clear guidance around academic integrity, ethical use, or institutional policy. This ambiguity can lead to increased anxiety and stress, contributing to wider concerns around mental health in GenAI learning environments.
Another concern is the risk of impersonal learning environments (Berei & Pusztai, 2022). When GenAI are implemented without inclusive design, the experience can feel detached and isolating, particularly for WP students, who often already feel marginalised. While GenAI tools may streamline administrative and learning processes, they can also weaken the sense of connection and belonging that is essential for student engagement and success.
GenAI can narrow the divide — with the right strategies
Although WP students are often excluded from digital networks, which Connectivism highlights as essential for learning (Goldie, 2016), GenAI, if used thoughtfully, can help reconnect them by offering personalised support, reducing geographic barriers, and expanding access to educational resources.
To achieve this, we propose five key strategies:
Invest in infrastructure and access: Universities must ensure that all students have the tools to participate in the AI-enabled classroom including access to devices, core software, and free versions of widely used GenAI platforms. While there is a growing variety of GenAI tools on the market, institutions facing financial pressures must prioritise tools that are both widely used and demonstrably effective. The goal is not to adopt everything, but to ensure that all students have equitable access to the essentials.
Rethink training with inclusion in mind: GenAI literacy training must go beyond traditional models. It should reflect Equality, Diversity and Inclusion principles recognising the different starting points students bring and offering flexible, practical formats. Micro-credentials on platforms like LinkedIn Learning or university-branded short courses can provide just-in-time, accessible learning opportunities. These resources are available anytime and from anywhere, enabling students who were previously excluded such as those in rural or under-resourced areas to access learning on their own terms.
Build digital communities and peer networks: Social connection is a key enabler of learning (Siemens, 2005). Institutions should foster GenAI learning communities where students can exchange ideas, offer peer support, and normalise experimentation. Mental readiness is just as important as technical skill and being part of a supportive network can reduce anxiety and stigma around GenAI use.
Design inclusive GenAI policies and ensure ongoing evaluation: Institutions must establish clear, inclusive policies around GenAI use that balance innovation with ethics (Schofield & Zhang, 2024). These policies should be communicated transparently and reviewed regularly, informed by diverse student feedback and ongoing evaluation of impact.
Adopt a human-centred approach to GenAI integration: Following UNESCO’s human-centred approach to AI in education (UNESCO, 2024; 2025), GenAI should be used to enhance, not replace the human elements of teaching and learning. While GenAI can support personalisation and reduce administrative burdens, the presence of academic and pastoral staff remains essential. By freeing staff from routine tasks, GenAI can enable them to focus more fully on this high-impact, relational work, such as mentoring, guidance, and personalised support that WP students often benefit from most.
Conclusion
Generative AI alone will not determine the future of equity in higher education, our actions will. Without intentional, inclusive strategies, GenAI risks amplifying existing digital inequalities, further disadvantaging WP students. However, by proactively addressing access barriers, delivering inclusive and flexible training, building supportive digital communities, embedding ethical policies, and preserving meaningful human interaction, GenAI can become a powerful tool for inclusion. The digital divide doesn’t close itself; institutions must embed equity into every stage of GenAI adoption. The time to act is not once systems are already in place, it is now.
Dr Lei Fang is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Transformation at Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests include AI literacy, digital technology adoption, the application of AI in higher education, and risk management. lei.fang@qmul.ac.uk
Professor Xue Zhou is a Professor in AI in Business Education at the University of Leicester. Her research interests fall in the areas of digital literacy, digital technology adoption, cross-cultural adjustment and online professionalism. xue.zhou@le.ac.uk
The debate over whether higher education (HE) serves as a vehicle for social mobility that nurtures meritocracy or as a mechanism for social reproduction that reinforces and exacerbates inequalities in society has persisted for some time. The first perspective regards HE as a meritocratic, achievement-based system of stratification that selects and allocates individuals to societal roles based solely on their merit (in line with Émile Durkheim’s theories). Conversely, the second viewpoint sees education as a means that perpetuates social stratification and the cultural hegemony of the elite (reflecting Bourdieu’s perspective). This phenomenon occurs because students’ socio-economic backgrounds significantly influence their access to, decisions regarding, and success within HE.
To mitigate the impact of socioeconomic background on individuals’ educational opportunities, a movement of research and activism spans from South America to Africa and the Far East, advocating for free HE. To investigate this claim, I examined the situation in Syria, which has consistently asserted that it possesses a meritocratic HE system aimed at fostering societal equality through the provision of free public HE for all since the 1970s. I analysed the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) database for 15 academic years, from 2001 to 2015. This dataset encompassed information on student access and graduation rates, categorised by type of education (public, private, higher institutes, and technical institutes), education level (undergraduate and postgraduate), gender (male and female), city, faculty, and specialisations. This analysis revealed various forms of inequality, specifically class-based inequalities, city-based inequalities, and gender-based inequalities.
Class-based inequalities
Although every citizen in Syria who finishes school can access free public HE, many students from high socio-economic backgrounds choose private HE to obtain better education or to pursue specific courses unavailable in the free public tracks. An analysis of the data reveals that the graduation rate in private institutions is almost double that of public institutions. One of the reasons behind this discrepancy in graduation rates between free public HE and private HE is the lack of funding for free public HE. Public university students suffer from a high student-teacher ratio (in some cases, 140 students per teacher) and poor infrastructure compared to the low student-teacher ratio (around 20 students per teacher) and better infrastructure in private universities. Furthermore, inadequate funding for free public universities has led qualified lecturers to prefer teaching at private institutions. This has widened the inequality between public and private HE institutions, as students with the financial capacity to access private HE learn from the most qualified teachers in Syria and receive the best knowledge available.
City-based inequalities
Although Syria has 14 cities, during the analysis period (2008–2013), it had only 5 free public universities located in 5 different cities. These universities have small branches or centres in all Syrian cities, offering limited course options. This design of the HE system has neglected some cities in Syria, leaving them without a proper educational framework. Having only one large university in select cities advantages students who reside in those areas, as they do not endure the added financial and mental pressures that students from other cities face to access education, such as paying for accommodation, living away from home, and travelling to see their families. Consequently, many students from cities without a university may encounter additional barriers to accessing HE, negatively affecting their academic, professional, and personal opportunities and choices. This could explain why cities like Damascus, Homs, and Latakia (where universities are located) are consistently overrepresented in HE, while students from Hama, al-Hasakeh, and al-Rakka (which lack universities) are consistently underrepresented.
In addition to the inequality of access to HE, city-based inequalities also encompass disparities in accessing the various specialisations and faculties offered by HE. This is further exacerbated by the sector’s design as not all faculties or specialisations are available at every university or branch. For instance, undergraduate media studies are solely taught in Damascus. Although Damascus constitutes only 8.75% of the Syrian population, students from Damascus account for 23.9% of the total number of media students. This representation is nearly three times their percentage of the overall population. This significant overrepresentation of students in certain courses occurs at the expense of those from other cities who are unable to access these courses and faculties because they are not available in their localities. This trend of unequal access to specialisations applies to numerous disciplines (eg Pharmacy, Dentistry, Medicine, Arts, IT, Mechanical Engineering, and Architecture). In each of these specialisations, students in the cities where the courses are taught have a distinct advantage over students from other cities in terms of access.
Gender-based inequalities
Officials in the Syrian HE sector have consistently celebrated the progress they have made, asserting that free HE has eliminated gender-based inequality by achieving near parity in enrolment rates. Although noticeable progress has indeed occurred, this claim does not hold up under scrutiny as it obscures other gender inequalities affecting certain groups within the population.
An analysis of the database reveals that, while there is no overarching gender gap in the sector, apart from in undergraduate public universities, disparities exist across all other educational tracks. Moreover, the higher the level of education (Master’s, PhD, etc), the more pronounced the gap becomes. The analysis further indicates that gender-based inequalities extend beyond females’ access to specific tracks and impact female academic representation within the sector. A 14-year average shows that female teachers constitute less than 25% of the total teaching staff in the sector. However, in lower-paid and less prestigious roles, such as technical and administrative positions, females occupy more jobs than their male counterparts (57%).
Conclusion
Simply offering free HE does not address the broader socio-economic inequalities that limit people’s opportunities in HE. Assuming that free HE will foster equality in society presumes that everyone has an equal capacity to access education. This paper demonstrates that HE, if not paired with an inclusive sectoral design, increased funding, and a comprehensive strategy to alleviate socioeconomic inequalities, will persist as a site of social reproduction that creates and exacerbates disparities within societies, even if provided at no cost.
Dr Oudai Tozan recently finished his PhD at the University of Cambridge, researching the potential role of exiled Syrian academics and researchers in rebuilding the higher education sector of Syria. This blog is based on an article published in Policy Reviews in Higher Education: Tozan, O. (2024) ‘Peeling the multiple layers of inequalities in free higher education policies’ (online 12 July 2024).
On 18 November I was ill. I recovered in time to travel to Helsinki for a symposium two days later, but winter storms shut down the airport, delayed flights and lost luggage, including mine. The symposium director Dr Timothy Smith (image 2 below, to the left) had to step in to act as my wardrobe assistant. Like many neurodivergent academics, Tim works across an astonishing range of knowledges, including political science, fine art, public policy and pedagogy. But I’m quite certain that sourcing for clothes to fit 155cm grumpy people isn’t part of their typical repertoire.
Image 2Image 3
Image 2: A symposium with person standing to the left holding a microphone; another in the middle, seated, in front of a projection with book cover and QR codes and next to a screen showing live captioning; more people in the foreground on different forms of seating and being
Image 3: Fidget toys placed on top of a paper file that reads ‘UNIARTS HELSINKI’, with a name tag with a lime green strap and name ‘KAI’.
Tim’s Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium, which took two years of advocacy and planning, and draws on several more of research across neurodiversity and art education, took place at the University of the Arts Helsinki, modelling best practices for inclusivity, not just for neurodivergent folx. Universities, watch and learn. Yes it can be done. So, what does a symposium led by love look like in action? Let’s spell out a few ways how:
Programming not to neo-liberalist but ‘crip time’ (Kafer 2013), enabling us to process our thoughts, with 30 minute breaks between sessions, and a 2-hour lunch break;
Employment oflive professional CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning – not the still racist AI captioning that does not grasp ‘non-standard’ accents (image 2, to the right);
Where divergent modes of being – including horizontally, in motion etc, not just seated or erect – are affirmed (image 2, foreground);
Inclusion of fidget toys in the goody bag (image 3);
Provision of quiet spaces – no, we’re not talking about a broom cupboard or first aid room doubling, but a (care-)fully decked out sensory rooms for group or solo use, with low lighting, different soft furnishings as well as more sensory objects for people to shut off, calm down and/or regroup (image 4);
Detailedmaps, diagrams and instructions for ‘walking or wheeling’ to venues; including for a dinner, at a five-star hotel, which was a delicious vegan spread – and entirely free of charge;
Priced at less than one-third the fee of a usual conference at €100 – and that’s for ‘participants receiving full institutional financial support’; otherwise, ‘please select the €0 fee option’;
Elevating and celebrating diverse body-minds-worlds whose research, creative and professional practice gather, collide and transcend disciplines, fields of knowledge, cultures, geopolitical borders, and specialisms and in the lineup. This includes shy*play, a pedagogical platform, collective, and art practice comprising teacher-researchers from Netherlands-Spain Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, who invite us to ‘do neurodiversity’ (images 5a-5b); Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi discussing their Curating for Change curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Liverpool and urging – no, daring – the arts and cultural sector to step up and ‘crip the museum’ (image 6); US-Canadian-Polish feminist researcher and author of several books including Asexual EroticsProfessor Ela Przybylo disclosing their new identity/positionality of being autistic, and inviting responses Towards a Neuroqueer Conference Manifesto/a/x.
Image 4Image 5aImage 5b Image 6
Image 4: Sensory room, with low blue-green lighting, soft furnishings and soft toys
Image 5a: shy*play’s Antje Nestel and Aion Arribas, both holding microphones and reading from papers strewn on a long table
Image 5b: people ‘doing neurodiversity’ in different ways, including by displaying their creations on a wall that acts as a shared canvas
Image 6: Estonian-UK PhD candidate Iris Sirendi at a long desk speaking to a projection with a slide with the heading ‘What’s Next?’ and a logo that reads ‘The Neurodiverse Museum’
The above are just a few of the highlights from the in-person session on 22 November 2024, which complements an online symposium with a different programme a week prior on 15 November 2024 for those who prefer the digital interface, both of which are recorded with transcripts which all participants can freely access.
I’m not singing the praises of the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium because I was the keynote speaker.
I’m saying the above as I’ve been a keynote as well as participant in more than 100 conferences – and I’m still allergic to them, not least as someone who is hyperactive and literally cannot sit still. I’m also saying this as someone who’s curated several, including one on running as an arts and humanities discourse that a 2014 Guardian article said ‘other conferences could take a leaf out of’, for its 8-minute sprint formats and multi-modal approaches including film screening, meditation sessions and run-chats.
But Tim’s conference was way better. The symposium is prioritising not just neurodivergent and queer – neuroqueer (Walker 2021) – perspectives. Following the positionality of multiply-minoritised researchers in higher education Angel L. Miles, Akemi Nishida and Anjali J. Forber-Pratt at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Vanderbilt University as expressed in their powerful open letter to White disability studies and ableist institutions of higher education (2017), the symposium focuses on research that counter ‘white supremacy and racism; colonialism and xenophobia; ageism; sexism and misogyny; cisnormativity and transphobia; and heteronormativity and heterosexism’.
And I’m sure that Tim, like me, wants other conferences to come, to even better ours.
So, take our baton. Run with it.
Why neurodiversity? Why now?
‘Neurodiversity’ – broadly the coexistence of different ways of processing information, learning and being – has exploded as a buzzword in the past few years. If you didn’t know that 15-20% (Doyle 2020) of humans are autistic, with dyslexia, Tourettes, ADHD and other forms of neurodevelopmental processes, you will have run into the extensive media coverage, or seen your Gen-Z students or kids declaring their ‘neuro-spiciness’ on Tik Tok.
This year alone, I was external examiner for two creative PhDs by/for/with neurodivergence, and helped deliver one PhD candidate to the finish line and whom, since 28 November, can now add ‘Dr’ to their name, likely to the chagrin of those who think that only clinicians are ‘real’ doctors and experts. Collectively, these efforts are countering medicalised and deficit approaches to cognitive difference. By 2050, 1.94 billion of the 9.4 billion population will be neurodivergent – making neurodivergence far from a ‘niche’ phenomena or area of research, but one with substantive critical mass.
Those with social capital wear their difference as proud badges of honour. So far so ‘authentic’.
But surprise, surprise – for the multiply-minoritised, their difference continues to be demonised, pathologised, infantilised, and/or policed. This includes teachers and researchers who draw on their neurodivergence in their teaching and research. That’s also why many aren’t out – or have/want access to diagnosis (which themselves have long waiting lists, are costly and more), etc, and often aren’t reflected in the official figures and studies. It’s also only recently been understood in leadership studies that when a white heterosexual cis-man expresses his ‘true self’, it’s just not acceptable, or even laudable. For those who are not straight, not white, not of the right class, or the right skin tone etc – authenticity comes at a high cost – including literally so. Being dyslexic, I struggle with normative approaches to reading and writing – but reading and writing are literally bread and butter for an academic! Disclosing that you cannot read or write would be tantamount to career-suicide, especially if you are on a fixed-term contract – if you have been able to survive the ableist, racist and sexist HE system at all, that is.
Harvard, World Economic Forum, NESTA and other global bodies have been selling neurodivergence as the ‘next talent opportunity in the workplace’, ‘competitive advantage’ and a ‘neuroleadership’ antidote to in tackling wicked challenges for the Fourth Industrial Revolution — but without neurodivergent voices in this discussion, isn’t this objectifying and othering?
Then, there’s a certain cartoon-tycoon who has been dominating the headlines. When not firing their critics from their factories and firms, or firing rockets to colonise the moon and Mars, this person is firing spats on social media — before buying up the site to make it their temple for ‘unmoderated toxicity’. After firing pot-shots at child-free cat ladies, they’re asking ‘high-IQ revolutionaries’ to work for no pay for an incumbent government. The latter call is interesting because this person had announced that they are ‘with Aspergers’, using the outdated terminology still instrumentalised by certain ‘high-functioning’ autistic people, to denote that they are a genius — ie a high-IQ revolutionary themselves!
Why neurodiversity, love and HE art and design?
As an autistic child-free cat lady, it’s my duty to ask other neurodivergent artists, academics, activists and allies within Higher Education (HE) to do more and do better, to call out on dangerous neurodivergent figures and approaches, and to counter that with love. If Machiavellian misfits and messiahs weaponise their neurodivergence, so must neurodivergent movers and shakers dis-arm them.
Image 7
Caption: Love-led guidelines for to make spaces more inclusive, in diagram form with 8 blocks of texts. From Tan, Kai Syng. Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network shared, LIVE, CO-CREATED Community Guidelines since 2022
For several years, I’ve researched into and discussed the need to dismantle harmful narratives of neurodiversity. Through an art-psychiatry project, founding of a global 435-member network for neurodivergent innovators, I’ve urged for a decolonial — ie shift of focus away from knowledge and practices in the West and global north — and intersectional — ie consideration of a how multiple, complex contexts interact and intersect — approach. We’ve come up with love-led guidelines for activities (image 7). I’m editing a publication with a major academic publisher, which is possibly the first book with openly neurodivergent academics ranging from early career researchers to established, newly-‘out’ professors, to discuss our research through the prisms of neurodivergence and creativity (c2027). Along the way, we are introducing and foregrounding neurodivergent approaches to knowledge, creative research and writing with play, lived experience and more, thus challenging the dominant, normative habits demanded by the academic publishing industrial complex that emphasise the linear, causal, and ‘neutral’.
On this SRHE platform, I’ve previously discussed a neurodivergence-inspired pedagogical approach to transform HE culture, illustrating how this isn’t just an armchair exercise or a theoretical pontification from the ivory tower, with examples I have led, such as a four-day festival for Black History Month 2020 in Manchester. To mark Valentines’ day this year, I discussed the need to build love into HE curricula – standing on the shoulders of great artists, activists and teachers before us, like bell hooks, Paulo Friere and James Baldwin.
My keynote at the Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium was entitled ‘Neuro-Futurism and Reimagining Leadership’. My performance-lecture was based on my book of the same title, subtitled ‘An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation’. Grasping how systemic oppressions are interconnected and how liberatory approaches to education must be joined up is vital in this discussion. I postulate a new intellectual agenda and action plan for ‘leadership’ as discourse and practice anchored in visual arts and arts education. Re-claiming the subject from business or arts management, and away from a trait/talent hinged on individualism, hierarchy, genes or luck, the book – and my performance – entangles critical leadership studies with socially-engaged art and relational aesthetics, embedding neuro-queering, futurity, and Chinese Daoist cosmology for the first time, to introduce ‘neuro-futurism’ as a beyond-colonial, (co-)creative change-making framework.
The participants of the symposium grasped this, responding by describing the performance-lecture as ‘phenomenal’. Brazilian artist-researcher Fran Trento, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki, even took live notes and pictures to add to their mobile participatory art installation, and wheeled it around, further spreading love in HE – literally (Image 8). If it hadn’t been snowing so heavily, Fran would have wheeled their installation outside, beyond the ivory tower, to make visible what the abstract yet very simple four-letter word – love – can look like.
Image 8Image 9
Image 8: Dr Fran Trento standing next to their mobile installation that comprises a jacket onto which participants can make marks onto, scrolls of film, and a pail with cameras and other creative and critical tools to dismantle harmful narratives and approaches
Image 9: A signboard ‘Neurodiversity in the Arts Symposium’ covered in snow, in a street raging with a snow-storm with cars passing by in front of a building across the road
And love is critical if we want to dis-arm and dismantle violent master (sic) narratives and approaches of neurodivergence. If neurodivergence is a superpower — a trope I have also critiqued as, while useful, it can be reductive/fetishistic, and capitalised by the ‘high-functioning’ to self-select into an elitist club that excludes others — then there are also villains and Machiavellian messiahs who abuse their (super)power. The irony is — and yes, autistic people can grasp irony — is that these self-proclaimed ‘anti-establishment’ ‘outsiders’ are often the very personification and product of the system,as poster boys of capitalism and more. Remember the call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ outside the Oxbridge set to join Number 10 – by figures whose pedigrees were archetypal of the ruling class — private education, Oxford degree, political strategist to a prime minister similarly outfitted?
Now that’s weird!
Braving storms ahead
My luggage got lost – again – on my way back to the UK, but academic and arts and cultural workers must lose neither our focus or hope. As hatred becomes even more mainstreamed and normalised, minoritised body-minds and approaches will remain hardest hit. There will be storms ahead (image 9). We – and that includes you – must step forward and step up. As US author Octavia E Butler (1947–2006) warns, unless we build ‘different leadership’ by ‘people with more courage and vision’, we’ll ‘all go down the toilet’. That’s why the Black science-fiction bestseller, who was also dyslexic, wrote story after story that reimagined different, better realities.
To not go down the toilet, we must disarm those who weaponise their neurodivergence. Here are some of the things that neurodivergent academics, artists, activists and allies can do:
Shift your curricula to elevate and celebrate efforts that are truly leader-ful, joy-ful and equitable, and directed towards collective liberation. I’ve named several in this article. No excuses.
Stop the hierarchy of normality – within neurodiversity groups in and beyond HE too – that props up antics that are white supremacist, patriarchal, misogynist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, colonialist, capitalist, ableist and extractive. Stop fuelling the misfits and messiahs with ill-intentions.
Instead, invest in and donate your time, energy and skills to support love-led efforts. If you have a voice/ platform and can afford to, mobilise it to push back against the violence. People in senior management paygrades, make use of your position/proximity to the top of the food-chain to action positive change beyond lip service or generic policy statements about the civic duty of HE, and bring to life its promises about equity, social justice and inclusion.
On that latter note, I’m seeking to curate a 3-day international summit in 2026 that re-imagines HE art and design as a change-making and future-making force through neuroqueer, social justice and leadership prisms. This welcomes anyone with a stake in the arts and culture, higher education, social change and inclusive futures, to get together to explore the coexistence of different ways to (un-)learning and being in the world, to share best practices about inclusion, and to collectivise and co-create action plans for more inclusive futures within and beyond the art school and HE. Through quickfire provocations, transdisciplinary speed-dating, reverse-mentoring, co-creation of toolkits, skateboarding tours, running-discourses and other embodied forms of engagement, we will not just learn about ways to make ‘reasonable’ adjustments for neuro-divergent students and staff, but to learn about their innovative approaches, and thus reimagine ways to understand and do ‘leadership’, so as to make positive changes, within and beyond art and design and HE. This shift in paradigm to position art and design higher education is aligned with – and can amplify – other ongoing efforts in the sector, such as the Creative Education Manifesto. Get in touch if you’re keen to help do the work.
All that said, clearly, neither Tim’s symposium or my proposed summit are the only or last word in this matter. You, too, can lead with love, if you don’t already.Prioritise an intersectional approach to neuroqueer the curricula, towards dis-arming stories and approaches that are white supremacist, racist, colonialist, xenophobic, ageist, sexist, misogynistic, classcist, transphobic and heteronormative.
CREDITS: Photographs by Kai. Photograph of Kai by neurodivergent artist-curator-activist-PhD-candidate Aidan Moseby
Kai Syng Tan is an artist, academic, author, and agitator who adores cats and alliteration. Their bookNeuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation re-imagines leadership as a co-creative, neuro-queered practice centring anti-oppression and futurity: it was published in Summer 2024. See here to join the book tour. Sign up here to participate in the CHEAD Leadership Programme taster entitled What’s love got to do with leadership? led by Kai as a new CHEAD Trustee, which will feature a response by Pascal Matthias, Associate Vice President EDI and Social Justice, University of Southampton and Co-Founder at FACE (Fashion Academics Creating Equality). Kai is Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership, University of Southampton, UK. All views here are their own.
Degree Apprenticeships (DAs) have been ascendant in popularity and visibility since their launch in 2015. They are of particular interest to us at the Edge Foundation, where we’ve long championed novel approaches to the alignment of employer needs with provider offer and of the importance of access to high quality education experiences. In our recent event hosted with the SRHE’s HE Policy Network, we explored how DAs fit in the English higher education system, and reflected on their purpose.
DAs are offered across 17 industry sectors by employers ranging from SMEs to large national and international employers and are widely used in the public sector including in policing and the NHS. Studying on a DA programme is an opportunity to earn alongside learning at degree level and without paying tuition fees. About 100 higher education providers currently deliver this learning. The content of the curriculum is designed in partnership with employers, and employers fund DAs through an employer levy which employers can claim against to fund apprenticeship training. The number of DAs continue to grow, with participation up 8.2% to 46,800 in 2022/23.
While DAs were originally designed to address skills shortages and contribute to national economic growth, there has been some debate as to how effective DAs are as instruments to increase access and widen participation as claimed. It is also unclear how far the content of the curriculum should be determined by immediate employer needs versus the duty to prepare an effective and productive workforce for the future.
Our presenters provided productive and complementary perspectives on these questions from different stakeholders around DAs: employers, students, and mentors.
Employers and returns
Andrea Laczik and Kat Emms presented findings from Edge’s forthcoming research report on ‘Degree Apprenticeships in England’. This work based on interviews with nearly 100 stakeholders provides a broad sample of experiences of these groups which hitherto have often been considered in separation. Here we concentrated on employers’ motivations to engage with degree apprenticeships.
Employers favoured the sustainable employment and progression opportunities moulded closely to their needs that DAs facilitate. Some employers did see this as an opportunity for upwards mobility and diversification of the workplace. As one SME employer told us:
‘There are too many people in the IT industry that are like me. Okay, so we’re talking middle aged white guys… degree apprenticeships allow people who wouldn’t consider getting into this industry from a variety of backgrounds, creeds, colours. I want to increase the diversity in IT’.
Apprentices were also valued for their ability to apply theoretical learning to practical applications in work, for their developed communication and teamworking skills.
However, it was primarily large employers who had both greater resource and capacity to administer their levy funds and input into the design of DAs, meaning their DAs are often more closely aligned to their needs compared to SMEs. Many employers prioritised operations at the expense of workforce development and struggled with what was perceived as the loss of an apprentice for their off-the-job training for one day a week. The serendipity of the deployment of DAs in most sectors indicates a lack of clarity, dispersion, and embeddedness in employer thinking, behaviours, and strategising. There is a place for regional authorities to help administer levy transfer schemes, which may be underutilised currently.
Apprentices and belonging
Julie Pepper and Katherine Ashbullby, University of Exeter, explored how degree apprentices negotiate dual identities as both employees and students, and how this affects their relationship with the university. The degree apprentices they spoke to regarded themselves as employees first and foremost. This may be linked to the fact that they felt disconnected from a traditional university life and experience. However, many also regarded themselves as lifelong learners with distinct qualities including industry experience, connections and resilience. They discussed their ‘journey of transformation and change’ which they were able to fulfil through a DA. The weight of the dual identity nevertheless came with increased pressures.
The identities Julie and Katherine described bear considerable resemblance to that in existing research on part-time learners. And they illuminate some of differences between the highly structured programmes of employment-oriented identity formation in DA models and the more ‘open’ identity formation of UG courses. This is a productive difference. But it involves a trade-off – full time students have a disconnect with employers which mirrored DAs’ disconnect with socialisation opportunities in educational institutional communities.
Mentors and mentoring
Aimee France, Claire Staniland and Karen Stevens presented on their research, with Trudy Sevens from Sheffield Hallam University and with Josh Patel from Edge, on the role and identity of Work Based Mentors (WBMs) of degree apprentices in Allied Health Professions (AHP). DAs are increasingly important in NHS workforce planning. Defining the role of a WBM and identifying good practice is consequently valuable to ensure the success of DAs. As Aimee, Claire and Karen discussed, WBMs have a unique role distinct from an academic tutor or workplace assessor. Their role is both pastoral and acting as a bridge between the academic world and practice, particularly helping to identify opportunities to better integrate theory and practice. This is critical to providing recognition, perhaps accreditation, and effective training for WBMs. The formalisation of such roles might be welcomed, but only if important virtues of voluntarism, care, and reciprocity are maintained. The relevance of these findings outside AHP is likely to be high regarding other liminal mentorship roles.
Providers and social justice
Charlynne Pullen, also of Sheffield Hallam, turned to the perspective of providers, drawing on her research with Colin McCaig, and Kat Emms and Andrea Laczik from Edge. In the current uncertain higher education landscape, providers are motivated to strengthen and diversify their applied provision to draw on ‘untapped markets’ of student demand. Cultivating this market requires substantial efforts to stimulate interest from employers and potential students. How far these efforts do broaden entry and widen participation varied. With the growing awareness of DAs, concerns have arisen around so-called ‘middle-class capture’ of DA opportunities by candidates who likely would have attended HE regardless. DAs have high entry requirements, sometimes including assessment centres, and providers have limited means to influence recruitment which is ultimately the purview of employers. This meant that DAs currently display a contested role in enabling individual social mobility. Opportunities for school leavers seemed limited, though there is an arguable role for DAs in widening participation and entry to higher-level professions for adult learners. Social justice can potentially be achieved through DAs in two ways – either through social mobility of degree apprentices, and/or through widening participation in HE. DAs can offer social mobility for existing employees (as can any substantial on-job training) but will have no substantive role in widening participation to HE on current measurement methods which focus on young people, because DAs aimed at 18-year old school leavers do not attract the same level of diversity as existing undergraduate degrees offered by providers.
Conclusions
DAs represent one of the most exciting innovations in the way providers approach the design and delivery of degree level education in the UK. Together, this research indicates that while for employers and learners who can take advantage the benefits are substantial, there is work to do to improve their accessibility. DAs are still small scale. And, first and foremost, they are jobs. If employers do not have degree level vacancies, DAs cannot be offered. Until there are programmatic efforts to simulate job creation, distributing resources between employers, evidencing the impact of DAs more clearly, and identifying best practice in areas such as mentoring, would help strengthen the effectiveness of DAs.
Edge will be publishing three of the pieces of research on DAs featured in this blog in September and October 2024. To keep up to date with our research, sign up to our mailing list, or follow us on Twitter @ukEdge and LinkedIn.
The Edge Foundation is an independent, politically impartial foundation, inspiring the education system in order to help young people acquire the knowledge, skills & behaviours to flourish. Andrea Laczik is the Director of Research, Kat Emms is an Education and Policy Senior Researcher, and Josh Patel is a researcher.
And I am a weapon of massive consumption, And it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.
When I was asked to speak about my experiences of graduate indebtedness at the recent SRHE event in June, I was initially enthusiastic. I was a member of the first cohort of school-leavers expected to take out the government loans to pay the then new £9000 university fees in 2012-13. I took a gap year, completed an undergraduate degree, and subsequently received funding for a Master’s and a PhD. I believe I am one of the first of this new generation of highly indebted graduates to have been afforded the time and space to develop expertise around and reflect on the HE system I was a part of. Few graduate voices on their indebtedness are heard in research or policy discourse.
However, figuring out my contribution became frustrating. Firstly, any perspective I would bring would be unrepresentative. I am a mixed-race male from the home counties. I attended a Russell Group university, and had far too much fun in the sandbox of further academic study, sheltered from having to think seriously about entering the external labour market. Secondly, I had conducted no research myself on graduate experiences. I am also not an economist. I would be exposing my feelings about the current student finance regime (albeit informed by my related research) to the potentially sharp questioning of experts. This felt epistemically precarious.
Graduate indebtedness
My frustrations around the legitimacy of my voice and my disenfranchisement from the conversation around indebtedness are part of a broader series of doubts and tensions. It’s hard to avoid a sense of resentment every time I check (mainly to satisfy a grim curiosity) my rapidly ballooning student debt total on the Student Loans Company website. I will likely be making payments that have a negligible impact on that total until 2047. It is Sisyphean. At the same time, I had heard for many years hear policymakers and academics like Nick Barr talk about the inherent fairness of income-contingent loans. Given that individuals receive a substantial return from their investment in higher education (HE), it is right that the balance of costs should be shared between students and the state.
In Claire Callender and Steve Jones’ work on student experiences of indebtedness, the complaints of students and graduates are primarily centred around the slight delays of a few years to the privileges of an expected middle-class lifestyle, like buying a first house or having a family. Are these frustrations really valid, or are they just the mewlings of the demanding children of the late welfare state, now that democratic due diligence has found the public investment in our education was not providing an effective social return?
Thinking through these doubts was hard. Like the students in Claire’s and Steve’s research, I had internalised a certain logic. My failure to shed the shameful label of indebtedness lay in my regrettable choice to pursue history, my (apparently?) poor work ethic, and my subconscious suspicion of Big Four consultancy grad schemes. But I came to think about my frustrations with indebtedness through the work I’d done during my PhD. My frustration with the current loans regime is a frustration with ‘the whole way in which a society selects its priorities and orders itself’, to redeploy EP Thompson’s phrase from 1970. Our current politics has de-prioritised investments in the future, which undermines the realisation of a good society. Indebtedness serves as a sharp and recurring reminder of all of this.
The balance of freedoms
The axiom that those that benefit most from HE should bear proportionately more of the cost derives somewhat surprisingly from the 1960s. The story of post-war massification in the UK is a familiar one; participation in HE grew from less than 5% prior to 1939 to approaching 50% today. In 1962 a mandatory grant was introduced to pay for the education of ‘all those qualified by ability and attainment and who wished to do so’, in the words of the Robbins Report (1963). While this public-mindedness feels inevitable in the spirit of post-war optimism, at the time it was not uncontested. As one economist put it, in a system of grants, resources of the ‘poor and stupid’ in the general population who would not benefit from HE are used to fund the privileged lifestyles of the few ‘rich and intelligent’ who attended universities. While the Robbins Report advocated expansion based on grants, the chairman of the Robbins Report, Lionel Robbins (himself a neoliberal economist, as I have explored) thought the argument for loans and grants was delicately balanced.
Robbins considered the problem one of what he called the ‘balance of freedoms’. There was an important balance to strike between preserving freedoms in the present, and enabling future freedoms in the pursuit of social prosperity. For Robbins, prosperity was a consequence of the inherent tendency of individuals to pursue their own self-betterment in conditions of freedom. This included generating individual returns on the labour market and broader social returns. University education would increase young people’s productivity and ingenuity, while enhancing their understanding of their responsibilities to society.
Taxation (a substantial transgression of personal freedoms by the state) was only justified when it could be shown to enhance future freedoms. In the context of proportionately low attendance of HE in the UK in the post-war period, grants were a state investment in removing structural and psychosocial barriers to self-betterment in the population, particularly for women and others from underprivileged backgrounds. When a greater proportion of the population were empowered to pursue those opportunities, both individual and social prosperity would follow.
As a greater proportion of the population attended HE habitually, the justification for increased taxation would fall. It would no longer be justified to take poor people’s money to pay for the continued elevation of the gifted. When this happened, it would be more just for the burden of HE cost to fall back to young people so they could make an informed decision about the relative costs and returns of them attending HE.
The question of the balance of costs of HE was never as simple as stating that: because attending HE generates both a social return and a large individual return, students should be expected to take on some burden of the cost of their education.
As Robbins understood it, the question is: on the balance of how far future freedoms are enabled by the reduction of freedoms in the present, how far is it right that resources should be redistributed from the general population to fund HE?
Three frustrations
Revisiting the question of the balance of freedoms in the twenty-first century leads you to a different place than in the twentieth century. The burden of the costs of education is now tipped towards graduates far in excess of a good faith balance of freedoms. It serves a regime which has played politics, fetishised austerity, and sought short-term returns above sustainability and long-term economic prosperity. Reflecting on my indebtedness, I identified three rough frustrations:
Short-termism
Because we live in a democratic society, the assessment of our collective capacity to engender future freedoms is, rightly, subject to accountability through our political system. But the downward pressure this exerts on public expenditure is not inevitable (as it is sometimes presented) but a consequence of political culture. Public and policy discourse seems to have completely lost sight of the capacity of collective action to advance future freedoms. Austerity has led to an underinvestment in social infrastructure, ducked the costs of maintenance, and eviscerated our national capacities. The burden of the costs of repairing this damage has been shifted to our future. There is limited research as to the economic and social consequences of this debt. Both Labour and the Conservatives’ commitments to avoiding raises in tax feels like a failure to have an honest conversation with the electorate about our national priorities in the face of serious national and international challenges.
Poor redistributive justice
Recent London Economics modelling demonstrated that, for those taking new loans from August 2023, lower income female graduates will subsidise high-earning males’ education. Or, as James Purnell put it recently in publications for HEPI, ‘a nurse must now pay back more than a banker’. This is deeply unjust. It is completely antithetical to the progressive income tax regime we all abide by. It violently severs one route this generation can mutually support one another in our pursuit of human flourishing. And it is pointless. As Barr has argued, ‘The argument that tax cuts lead to growth is mistaken; lower taxes are not always better. Productive private investment needs to be complemented by productive public investment’. Job forecasts from other advanced economies expect more than 80% of the workforce will require some tertiary accreditation by 2050. Skills shortages even today are calculated to cost the UK economy up to £39 billion a year from 2024 through to 2027. Investment in education and training by employers and the state has deteriorated and productivity is stagnant. Redistribution is imperative.
Deterioration of HE
The deterioration of the unit cost following from the political deadlock around loans makes HE an unappealing place to plan a career. The transition period at the end of the PhD consists of a ridiculous juggling act of multiple contracts for everything from research to teaching to administrative roles. Despite all the hard work, remuneration is comparatively poor. All the delays to adult life that indebtedness inflict are compounded. Even permanent academic roles do not seem particularly secure given the redundancies sweeping over the sector. Add on top of all that the expected workload, bullying managerial cultures, artificial ED&I strategies, it is a wonder HEIs are able to attract qualified and ambitious candidates at all. During my time as a PhD and Fellow, I was paid more per hour as head coach of the university swim team than I was to deliver seminars.[1] Why bother?
The next sixty years
Robbins was arguing for expansion just after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The wars of the first half of the twentieth century were raw, living memories. HE was implicated in this in a complicated way – the powerful knowledge of modern societies taught through HE had the potential to both to raise living standards to unparalleled heights but also enable mass atrocities. A proper education cultivated the wisdom in students to wield modern technologies with responsibility.
Obviously freedom is diminished after a nuclear holocaust. But the existential crises I fear – everything from crises in teaching and healthcare, gender and social inequality, to the climate change and the resurgence of fascism across the world – if they are not tackled are also equally non-conducive to overall freedom. They require exponentially more of my generation and later generations to be part of the solution. Indebtedness is a constant reminder that our contribution to solving these problems is not worth collective support.
Josh Patel is a Researcher at the Edge Foundation. There, he has contributed to research on Degree Apprenticeships, New HEIs, and T levels, and is currently leading research on student experiences of tertiary pathways between HE and FE. He was previously a Fellow at the University of Warwick and completed his PhD on the justifications for the massification of higher education in liberal thought. He is writing a monograph on this topic for SRHE’s Research into Higher Education book series with Routledge. Here, Josh writes in a personal capacity. The views contained within do not necessarily reflect the views of the Edge Foundation.
[1] I have to qualify this by stressing that participation in student-led communities was central in my and (as I saw as a coach, tutor, and researcher) others’ personal development. My point is that there is a social maldistribution of resources that permits this circumstance.
The face of higher education is changing, albeit slowly. Despite decades of initiatives to seed diversity, the academy – in the UK at least – continues to be dominated by voices from groups that have historically enjoyed educational privilege.
Over the last ten years, there has been increasing interest in understanding and supporting the participation of ‘care-experienced’ learners in higher education – that is, students who spent time in the care of the state during childhood, usually due to neglect or trauma within their birth family. It includes, for example, those who spent time in foster care or children’s homes. It is a group of learners who have generally faced significant disruption and adversity in their lives, with the legacies known to persist into adulthood.
Definitive numbers do not yet exist, but it is estimated there are at least 5,000 care-experienced students in UK universities at any given time. It logically follows that a proportion of these will be in a position to seek entry into academic careers as they pass from undergraduate to postgraduate study and onwards. Indeed, there have long been care-experienced students in our universities – and it seems safe to assume that many have transformed their interests and successes into a career within the academy.
In reality, though, we don’t know. While there is vibrant interest in, for example, the careers of working class or disabled academics, we don’t believe that care-experienced academics have been the explicit focus of research before. In conceiving the study that underpins this piece, we envisaged that it would be a group that had faced – and overcome – significant challenges to reach their position. However, we wanted to understand more.
About our study
Our main objective was to seek out and foreground the voices of care-experienced academics. We wanted to understand the routes taken to their careers and these were impacted – if at all – by the legacies of their early lives. However, we were also cognisant that exploring groups who face particular challenges can often offer wider illumination about educational systems and their failings: what could the working lives of care-experienced academics tell us about the contemporary academy?
In our study, we spoke to 21 academics, spanning roles from research assistant to professor in universities across the UK. Most were women and aged between 30 and 44, with the majority based in social science departments. We were struck by the individualised nature of the career pathways represented, with around two-thirds having significant breaks in their educational journeys, especially between school and university.
Precarity and safety nets
An important consideration for our participants was the inherent precarity of academic careers. Several reported that they had benefited from ‘lucky’ relationships with doctoral supervisors or senior colleagues that had helped them to progress through short-term contracts or secure a permanent role.
While this is not itself an unusual experience, our participants generally had to navigate this without the family ‘safety nets’ on which other aspiring academics are generally able to draw. Several described anxieties, either presently or in the past, about insecurity of income or housing that reminded them of their early lives. Conversely, an academic career could offer long-term stability – not quite ‘a job for life’, but highly-valued financial security and more work-life flexibility than many other options.
Nevertheless, we were left questioning whether there were others outside our study who had not had these supportive encounters or for whom the precarity had proved unnavigable. Indeed, one of our participants had recently left academia and another was thinking seriously about doing so.
Imposter syndrome, rejection and belonging
Despite the satisfaction they experienced from their career, nearly all our participants described feeling a degree of ‘imposter syndrome’ within academia. They were conscious that they did not conform to the prevailing stereotypes of who an academic should be and many noted elements of their identity that emphasised this difference – clothing choices, hairstyles or body art. Feelings of difference are not, of course, unique to care-experienced academics and it reminded us of previous research focused on gender, social class, ethnicity and disability.
Questions of belonging were brought into sharper focus by workplace microaggressions or experiences of academic rejection. For example, one participant described how they felt compelled to challenge derogatory comments made by a colleague about young people in care, while another talked about how the harshness of the publication process surfaced difficult childhood memories about judgement and acceptance. These accounts led us to reflect on how more kindness in academic life would support greater inclusivity.
Visible or hidden?
Being care-experienced is unlike many other sites of inequality as there no physical attributes that conclusively identify someone. One ramification of this is that the individual gets a degree of choice about whether (and how) to disclose their status to managers, colleagues and students. We noted how our participants had come to quite different decisions on this, based on how they viewed their workplace and their role within it.
Around one-third had purposively chosen public visibility, often as part of an advocacy role within academia and wider society. This group tended to be teaching or researching around care issues and often used their profile to challenge negative stereotypes and expectations, as well as pressing for improvements in policy. Several talked about how their visibility helped them to build rapport with – and empower – disadvantaged or marginalised students.
Others reflected carefully on the persistent societal stigma around care and opted to not to share. They voiced concerns about prevailing stereotypes, fearing that colleagues might make assumptions about their mental health or academic abilities. There were also worries that their care-experienced status might overshadow their academic achievements or that they would be expected to be ‘bid-candy’ to help colleagues win funding.
A third group had adopted a strategic approach of disclosing selectively to trusted colleagues or presenting a fictive account that avoided difficult conversations. Even this approach could be vexed by misunderstandings from colleagues and require considerable work to juggle competing identities.
Final thoughts
It is difficult to summarise wide-ranging findings in a short piece like this, but we hope this has offered a flavour. Firstly, we argue that the endemic precarities of contemporary academia disproportionately impact those with the flimsiest safety nets. Secondly, we suggest that ignorance and inconsiderate practices undermine belonging, especially for those already perceiving themselves as imposters. Thirdly, we recognise the additional social and emotional work required to negotiate authentic identities. All three points draw inspiration from our participants’ lived experience, but each has wider relevance for how we structure and occupy spaces in the academy.
Finally, we would like to thank our participants for their time, insight and willingness to share sensitive elements of their lives with researchers who are not care-experienced. We are indebted to them and we hope that we have done justice to their stories.
This study was kindly funded through a British Academy and Leverhulme Trust Small Grant. The first article from the study is now available and we have articles in preparation focusing on academic identity work and the salience of school experiences.
The inclusion of students with disability in higher education
Individual assessment accommodation is a widely used instrument for inclusion of students with disabilities. It aims at reducing barriers and promoting equal participation, by taking into account the individual needs of a person. However, our research in the project SuccessInclusive (ErfolgInklusiv) has shown that it can also create barriers and lead to new forms of exclusion. It shifts the responsibility to the individual and creates an additional bureaucratic burden for students and university staff. Further, there are issues of legitimacy associated with individual accommodation. If some students are treated differently from others, this raises issues of fairness and equality. Lastly, individual accommodation makes students dependent on those who provide it. We therefore urge universities and policy makers to rethink their focus on individual accommodation and prioritize universal design measures.
Individual accommodation and universal design in German higher education
Universities can choose between two different strategies to promote inclusion in higher education. Universal design and individual accommodation. Universal design aims to reduce or eliminate barriers for all, a priori, whereas individual accommodation consists of solutions that meet the individual needs of specific students. Both approaches have their own benefits and problems. Usually, a combination of the two is used to promote inclusion. If we look at German higher education, universal design plays a minor role. Even though universities are obliged to implement universal design measures, these are mostly limited to physical accessibility. Instead, inclusion in German higher education relies heavily on individual accommodation (Gattermann-Kasper/Schütt, 2022; Steinkühler et al, 2023).
Individual responsibility and bureaucratic burden
If students want to use individual accommodation in German higher education, they need to know about their rights. For many students, this is the biggest obstacle to using Disadvantage Compensation, as they either do not know about their rights or see themselves as entitled to it (Steinkühler et al, 2023). Once these barriers have been overcome, they need to apply on the basis of a medically certificated impairment. The application process can cost time, energy and sometimes even money. Students reported a lack of information, long waiting times and unclear bureaucratic processes. Some of them talked of having to travel long distances to see specific doctors who would issue the necessary medical certificates. In some cases, students also had to pay for these certificates themselves. If these students must renew their application every year – as some faculties require – applying for individual accommodation means a great deal of effort to the students and can in itself be a barrier.
Additionally, individual accommodation involves a great deal of effort not only for the students but also for the university staff. At the German university where we conducted our interviews, each faculty accepts and handles applications on its own. The staff and the responsible professors review the applications, check them for form and plausibility, and must decide, if and to what extent students can be granted individual accommodation. These decisions are often based on previous decisions and experiences, rather than on official guidelines or laws. The small number of cases handled by individual faculties makes it difficult to build up experience and develop best practice. Thus, staff reported of uncertainty in dealing with individual accommodation requests.
The question of legitimacy
The lack of guidelines on the appropriate form and scope of individual accommodation creates uncertainties that undermine its legitimacy. Students who used individual accommodation reported that both, students and lecturers questioned the fairness of their accommodations. For example, fellow students asked them about their “advantage” and asked for advice on how they could get access to it so that their studies would be “easier”. Thus, students with disabilities who use individual accommodation often doubt its fairness and necessity, while simultaneously lacking an objective perspective. Social networks and previous experiences of accommodation can help in legitimizing accommodation and supporting the experience of studying as an equal.
Students also emphasized that individual accommodation strengthens the influence of individual people. To receive individual accommodation, students become dependent on doctors, university staff, lecturers and professors. While all of these can be helpful – and many students reported of positive and supportive encounters – this dependency can create impossible barriers. Students, whether they experienced negative or positive situations, highlighted this dependency as problematic. At every step, individuals can act as gatekeepers and prevent them from receiving the accommodations they need to rightfully study. For example, a student reported that he has to write several emails before every exam just to make sure the lecturers organize the accommodations that he is entitled to – and still does not always receive them. Another student was told by the university staff that the accommodation they requested would not be necessary, even though they provided a medical certificate. Many students shared stories of just being ignored by their lecturers, or of lecturers telling them that they did not have the resources to provide appropriate accommodations. Thus, individual accommodation was often experienced as creating an additional work load for the lecturers. In the worst case, these experiences can lead to students dropping out and missing the chance to pursue an academic degree; which is directly linked to the opportunity for students with disabilities to live a decent and independent life.
Lastly, our interviews showed that the process of accessing individual accommodation requires resources that are unequally distributed. Students from academic backgrounds, with extensive financial resources or extended social networks are better equipped to access individual accommodations. They can get a second opinion from another doctor, receive information on how to formulate applications, how to appeal or even legal advice. Further, dealing with the problems of gatekeeping also appears to be a gendered issue. Women in particular reported being doubted by others. For some, this went as far as medical gaslighting, the experience of being systematically doubted by medical professionals. Some of those who experienced these doubts resigned themselves when they encountered someone who did not want to believe or support them, rather than fight for their rights. Thus, not all students have equal access to individual accommodation. For some, receiving information about their rights, attaining a medical certificate, applying for individual accommodation,or dealing with gatekeepers is more problematic than for others. So, while other researchers have highlighted differences between students with obvious and stable disabilities and those with invisible and variable disabilities (Goldberg, 2016), our research showed that social networks, academic background, and gender of the students play an important role in the use of individual accommodation.
Concluding remarks
While we have focussed on the ways in which individual accommodation hinders inclusion, students and university staff also emphasized the positive aspects of individual accommodation. If there is a supportive culture and university staff have adequate resources, focussing on the individual needs allows them to find appropriate solutions and highlights the individual situation of each student. Students can feel heard and their disadvantages can be properly compensated for. However, this is rather the ideal case scenario. In our interviews, students reported a lack of a supportive culture in many disciplines, and in society in general, while the staff and lecturers experienced individual accommodation as demanding in terms of time and resources. We can therefore conclude that relying on individual accommodation to include students with disabilities can create significant barriers that can (re)produce exclusion. Universities should therefore rethink the way they implement inclusion and instead refer to measurements of universal design.
Pascal Angerhausen is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the International Center for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel. Email: angerhausen@incher.uni-kassel.de
Shweta Mishra is the Managing Director of the German Institute for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research. She is the Associate Editor of the Research into Higher Education Abstracts Journal.Her research focuses on social inequalities in higher education access and outcomes. She is an associate member of the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel.
References
Gattermann-Kasper M, Schütt M-L. (2022) Inklusive Hochschule. Konzeptionelle Grundlagen, aktueller Stand und Entwicklungen. In: Recht der Jugend und des Bildungswesens, 70, p. 92-106
Goldberg, C (2016). Is Intersectionality a Disabled Framework? Presenting PWIVID: In/Visibility and Variability as Intracategorical Interventions Critical Disability Discourses, 7: 55-88
Steinkühler J, Beuße M, Kroher M, Gerdes F, Schwabe U, Koopmann J, Becker K, Völk D, Schommer T, Buchholz S (2023) Die Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland: best3. Studieren mit einer gesundheitlichen Beeinträchtigung Hannover: DZHW
Much attention is now directed towards the role of evaluation in efforts to widening higher education participation. Indeed, the evaluation of interventions aimed at broadening HE access, and ensuring the success of those from under-represented groups once they are at university, is considered a priority by the Office for Students [OfS], (Blake 2022; OfS, 2023a; OfS, 2024).
Various guidance documents prepared by the HE regulator, both for individual higher education providers (OfS, 2023b), and Uni Connect, the government funded collaborative outreach programme (OfS, 2022), set out a rationale for this focus. ‘High quality evaluation,’ it is argued, ‘allows universities and colleges to understand the impact of their work to support students’, and to improve the effectiveness of this work (OfS, 2023a), and through sharing the findings of such investigations to ‘contribute to the wider evidence base’ (OfS, 2022, 12). In contrast, the role of research in widening participation [WP] receives far less attention and appears to be considered of less significance. Whilst ‘evaluation’ accumulates 42 references in the OfS’s advice to HE providers’ on their access and participation plans, research is mentioned 16 times (OfS, 2023b). More pointedly, the regulator’s guidance to Uni Connect partnerships states that ‘research is not one of the main aims or expected outcomes of funding’ (OfS, 2022, 13).
Yet, arguably, research has an equally important role to play in supporting and advancing the WP agenda. To appreciate this it is helpful to draw out the distinctions between research and evaluation. Perhaps the most fundamental of these relates to the broader remit that research has in ‘seeking new insights’ and making ‘new discoveries.’ Often this involves testing theories or hypotheses, and generating findings that have wider application (Anon, nd, np; Rogers, 2014). For some, research is viewed as ‘active and proactive’, whereas evaluation is ‘reactive’, in the sense of responding to an activity or practice (Anon, 2024, np).
Arguably, these distinct qualities mean that research has the potential to address a number of key WP challenges that remain unexplored in evaluations. For instance, providing insights into the reasons for the comparatively low rates of HE participation amongst particular groups of learners. These include young men from white, working class backgrounds, along with those taking vocational (applied general) courses and studying in further education colleges. All three are areas of current concern for those engaged in widening participation (Atherton and Mazhari, 2019; Raven, 2022; Raven, 2021).
In addition, it is by means of research that we can learn more about the longer-term impact of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis on the progression plans of those from more deprived neighbourhoods, as well as the reasons why some WP students appear more likely to drop out of university-level study. Research can also tell us about the post-graduation experiences of under-represented backgrounds – insights that are of central importance in presenting the case for HE. Indeed, research can be viewed as complementary to evaluation. Research can provide insights and guidance on how a particular WP challenge can be addressed, with evaluation deployed to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken.
Whilst the OfS’s limited support (and funding) may explain some of the comparative neglect of research, the way much WP-related research (admittedly, this includes my own) has tended to be conducted and disseminated may also act as an impediment to recognising its true value. Therefore, besides calling on the OfS to acknowledge the role that research can play in supporting efforts to widen participation, I have five suggestions aimed at fellow researchers for enhancing the accessibility – and impact – of their work:
Share research findings with WP practitioners through talks and presentations, as well as more interactive workshops
Publish work in journals whose readership includes WP practitioners and policy makers
Explore opportunities to circulate findings in more widely read newsletters and e-bulletins
Engage directly with practitioners in exploring potential research topics
Consider the practical, real world application of research findings.
I would welcome readers’ views on these suggestions.
Neil Raven is an educational consultant and researcher in widening access. Contact him at neil.d.raven@gmail.com.
Acknowledgements – Thank you to Tony Hudson, Lewis Mates, Jessica Benson-Egglenton, Robin Webber-Jones and John Baldwin.
