SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: Access


by Leave a comment

Higher education’s postcode lottery: How geography and disadvantage shape university access in England

by Frances Sit and Graeme Atherton

Across the world, access to higher education is often shaped as much by geography as by ability or aspiration. For many students, this can be starkly literal: the distance to a campus, the availability of local courses, and the time, travel, and financial costs of attending university determine whether learners can study close to home, work, care for family, or take the first steps toward the careers and social mobility that higher education uniquely enables.

In England, this reality is recently brought into sharp focus when the University of Essex announced the closure of its campus in the coastal city of Southend-on-Sea. By August 2026, the nearest routes into higher education for local students will be further away, harder to reach, and more costly. What will disappear is not just a campus, but a locally anchored gateway to opportunity.

The story of Southend matters because it reflects a broader national pattern. Across England, learners from coastal areas like Southend, smaller towns, rural communities or other ‘cold spots’ are facing similar barriers, making them systematically less likely to progress to higher education than their peers in cities or more well-served regions. Our report Coast and Country: Access to Higher Education Cold Spots in England lays bare the scale of these disparities, highlighting how geography continues to shape opportunity – and what must be done to address it.

A national picture that hides local realities

Drawing on ‘Widening Participation in Higher Education’ data published annually by the Department for Education, our report examines the differences in higher education participation by age 19 for state-funded pupils living in different types of places in England. We focus specifically on learners eligible for free school meals (FSM), who are among the most disadvantaged in the education system and a critical group for understanding equity in higher education.

At a national level, higher education participation for FSM learners stood at 29% in 2022/23. But this headline figure masks stark geographical variation. Excluding London areas, which account for only 16% of England’s population, the average progression rate outside the capital fell to just 23%. London’s strong performance is obscuring a far more challenging situation across much of the rest of the country.

Disparities become sharper as places become smaller. In 2022/23, the average higher education progression rate for FSM learners fell steadily from 42% in core cities to just 19% in villages and rural areas. Coastal communities see notably lower progression as well. Their average higher education progression rate for FSM learners in 2022/23 was 11 percentage points lower than in inland areas, with pupils in many coastal areas having less than a one-in-five chance of going on to higher education.   

All in all, as depicted in Diagram 1, it is in rural villages where FSM learners had the least chance of progressing to higher education. Coastal locations also tend to have lower participation rates compared to their inland counterparts, even when the areas are similar in size and settlement type.

Diagram 1: Average FSM higher education participation rates in different area types in 2022/23

Explaining the gaps – and why place matters

It is often argued that disparities in HE progression are largely explained by attainment in schools, and for a number of years increasing attainment was the priority where widening access work was concerned for the Office for Students. In the report, we mapped GCSE attainment at the area level against FSM higher education progression rates in 2022/23 and we indeed found a strong correlation (𝑟=0.9001). However, that relationship between prior attainment and FSM higher education participation becomes much weaker when it comes to rural villages and coastal areas (𝑟=0.4181 for rural villages; 𝑟=0.4733 for coastal areas). In these communities, improving attainment alone does not fully address low higher education participation.

The presence of a higher education provider can also be a decisive factor in participation. In our report, we mapped the distribution of universities and colleges in England. HE providers are heavily concentrated in core cities, and 39 of the 42 core city areas are situated inland. London alone is home to over 40 universities and HE institutions, plus numerous smaller providers, while half of the 18 rural villages in our study have only one or two universities – and the other half have none. This uneven distribution underscores how profoundly that where you live can shape whether higher education feels accessible. That said, it is not possible to say the extent to which the level of higher education provision or its supply affects the demand for it.

The limits of attainment and provider distribution in explaining disparities in HE participation underline the need for education policy that truly takes place into account. Effective approaches must go beyond national and regional averages, and at times operate at a finer level of granularity than broad place labels like ‘rural’ or ‘coastal’ can capture. Low participation is not confined neatly to rural villages or seaside towns, nor does urban location in itself guarantee access. In 2022/23, for example, the local authority area with the second lowest FSM higher education progression rate nationally was South Gloucestershire, an urban core city area. Places that appear to have similar characteristics can also experience vastly different outcomes: for instance, Oldham and Blackpool are both large towns located just over 50 miles apart, yet FSM progression rates stood at 36.2 percent in Oldham compared to just 16.2 percent in Blackpool.

These contrasts highlight why widening participation policy and efforts must engage with local conditions in a more nuanced way. Factors such as transport connectivity, the availability of part-time or flexible study, alignment with local labour markets, cultural expectations around higher education, and the strength of local support networks all shape whether HE feels achievable. It is the combination of structural, logistical and social factors that shape whether HE is genuinely within reach. Without attention to these finer-grained dynamics, place-based policy risks remaining too blunt to reach the communities most in need.

Breaking the postcode lottery

Since our report was published, the latest ‘Widening Participation in Higher Education’ data, covering up to 2023/24, have become available. Patterns of disparities in FSM higher education participation between different types of places in England have remained unchanged. And as shown in Diagram 2, gaps between different types of places have continued to grow over the past decade, under a widening participation approach that emphasises individual institutions over the collaborative, place-based, cross-sector strategy previously used.

Diagram 2: Gaps in average FSM higher education participation rates between different types of places in 2013/14 and 2023/24

It is therefore welcome that the government has begun to acknowledge these challenges. Its Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper commits to addressing higher education cold spots, improving understanding of local supply and demand, and tackling systemic barriers faced by disadvantaged learners. The creation of a Higher Education Access and Participation Task and Finish Group focused on tackling regional gaps and barriers across the student journey is a positive step in this direction, and one of our report’s authors, Professor Graeme Atherton, is sitting on the group.

However, recognition must translate into delivery. Our report sets out key recommendations, including setting local education participation targets as part of the government’s devolution strategy, auditing post-16 provision by place, and shifting the focus of widening access strategy from individual providers’ approach to local participation outcomes.

The evidence is clear: without a place-sensitive approach, existing gaps in HE participation will continue to widen. The closure of the University of Essex’s Southend campus illustrates what is at stake. If place continues to dictate access to higher education, individuals and the communities they call home risk being shut out, not just from higher education, but from the opportunities, skills and futures it makes possible.

Frances Sit is Research and Policy Officer at the Ruskin Institute for Social Equity (RISE), which produces policy-relevant research related to inequality in the UK and focuses particularly on place-based inequality, education and skills, work/labour market and the role of business. Frances supports RISE’s policy and research initiatives and coordinates the planning, promotion and delivery of its events. Previously, she served as the Policy and Communications Officer at the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON), the UK’s professional organisation supporting those involved in widening access to higher education. Before that, Frances worked as a journalist, reporting on education, politics, social movements.

Professor Graeme Atherton is Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Regional Engagement at the University of West London, Vice-Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford and the Director of the World Access to Higher Education Network (WAHEN). He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Trinity College Oxford and has been working in the field of education research and management since 1995. An international leader and researcher in access to higher education and social mobility, Graeme has produced over 200 conference papers and publications, led regional, national and international initiatives to increase opportunity in higher education and frequently comments on social mobility and education in the UK and internationally. He founded AccessHE and the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON), and now leads the Ruskin Institute for Social Equity (RISE).


by 4 Comments

Rethinking metrics, rethinking narratives: why widening access at elite universities requires more than procedural fairness

by Kate Ayres

For many years, the fair access agenda in UK HE has emphasised more transparent and consistent admissions processes that are underpinned by clearer criteria and targeted support. As a qualified accountant and training in Lean Six Sigma, I’ve always been drawn to efficiency, clarity, and measurable improvement – principles that shaped much of my work in HE. However, as I moved into more senior roles and worked more closely with institutional decision-makers, I started to ask a different kind of question: why do some reforms, even when implemented well, seem to make little real difference?

That question sits at the centre of my doctoral research. Despite significant reforms the social composition of Durham University’s student body has felt largely unchanged. From within the institution, it was evident that fairer offer-making was not translating into meaningful shifts in the home-student entrant profile. This revealed an uncomfortable truth: so far, no amount of investment or policy reform can, by itself, reshape the social forces that determine who sees a Durham degree as desirable.

To understand why, we need to stop looking only at what universities do, and start looking at how students behave, and how the wider customer base, or audience, signals who belongs where.

Why aren’t internal reforms enough?

The limited shift in Durham’s home-student body prompts a key question: are our current metrics assuming universities can control demand, when in fact they can only affect the choices of applicants already in their pool?

My research used fourteen years of UCAS admissions data for Durham University to analyse how applicant characteristics, predicted attainment, school type, and socio-economic background intersect with admissions decisions and outcomes. Using multivariate logistic regression and Difference-in-Differences (DiD) analysis, I examined the impact of Durham’s 2019 move from decentralised to centralised admissions.

Results

Since the centralisation of admissions in 2019:

  • Contextual students are now 72% more likely to receive an offer, reflecting a major shift in offer-making behaviour.
  • Contextual applicants to selecting departments remain 40% less likely to get offers than those applying to recruiting ones.
  • No improvement is seen in firm-acceptance rates, suggesting culture or fit still shape applicant choices.
  • Insurance-acceptance has risen 21%, showing Durham is increasingly seen as a backup option for these students.
  • Contextual students are now 2% less likely to enrol after receiving an offer, raising concerns about deeper barriers to entry.

Trend Analysis

The findings were initially encouraging with Contextual applicants became more likely to receive an offer after centralisation. However, the increased offer rate had very limited effect on who actually enrolled. Contextual applicants were increasingly likely to accept alternative universities before Durham. Meanwhile, the proportion of entrants from higher parental SES groups increased, and independent-school students (already overrepresented) continued to make up around one-third of Durham’s home undergraduate intake in 2023.

Who is in control of demand?

While Durham has a history of taking affirmative action for contextual students, these findings illustrate that the OfS-set POLAR4 ratios will never be achievable for somewhere like Durham because these measures assume that universities themselves control demand. Drawing on Organisational Ecology, I argue that this assumption is flawed.

To understand why improved offer-making did not shift entrant composition, we need to look beyond institutional behaviour and examine the ecosystem dynamics that shape demand. Just as ecosystems rely on diversity, so does HE. No institution can appeal to every audience, nor should it. Organisations operate within ecosystems shaped by social, economic, and political forces, and crucially by their audiences, who ultimately determine demand. Therefore, it is the audience that defines an organisation’s niche. In HE, applicants gravitate toward universities that align with their social tastes, expectations, and sense of belonging. Therefore, the most powerful forces shaping demand are the social networks and information transmissions within and these influence applicants long before they apply: what they hear at school, family expectations, and what peers believe “people like us” do—and where “people like us” go.

Currently, wider systemic shifts are reinforcing and entrenching Durham’s niche, especially among white independent-school applicants:

  1.  As Oxbridge intensifies its widening participation initiatives, applicants who traditionally succeed (predominantly white students from independent schools) are increasingly less likely to secure offers.
  2. These applicants seek the closest alternative to the Oxbridge experience, with Durham emerging as a preferred option.
  3. Durham is increasingly accepted as a firm choice because of its perceived “fit” with these applicants’ identity and expectations (as seen in this research).
  4. These applicants typically achieve their predicted grades, making entry more likely.
  5. Their growing presence reinforces existing social narratives about Durham’s student profile.
  6. Consequently, the entrant composition remains socially narrow, and these dynamics may intensify.
  7. The narrative of Durham as a socially exclusive institution persists.
  8. Applicants from non-traditional backgrounds thus perceive a lack of belonging.
  9. As a result, these applicants are less likely to select Durham as their firm choice.

While these dynamics may prompt questions about whether Durham could or should shift away from its position as an “almost-Oxbridge” institution, the evidence suggests that only limited movement is structurally possible. Organisational Ecology predicts that Durham’s niche will remain relatively stable over time and there are many benefits of sticking with a niche approach. The university may be able to broaden its appeal slightly at the margins, drawing in more students from POLAR4 Q3 and Q4 backgrounds, but POLAR4 Q1 and Q2 students are likely to remain outliers. The real question is therefore not whether Durham can radically transform its appeal, but whether it can create the conditions in which those who do apply feel they can belong and thrive. This is where the OfS should take action because, rather than holding universities accountable for applicant pools (which they do not control), it should focus on the areas where institutional agency is strongest. Improving the lived experience of contextual students, strengthening narrative and cultural inclusion, and raising offer-to-acceptance conversion rates are all within Durham’s sphere of influence. Current patterns, particularly the relatively low acceptance and entry rates among contextual applicants, suggest that cultural barriers remain. Regulators should therefore attend less to the composition of the total entrant pool and more to how effectively institutions support, retain, and attract those who already see themselves as potential members of the community.

Taken together, the wider systemic effects detailed above reinforce, rather than shift, Durham’s niche. Only a proportion of applicants will ever feel an affinity with the institution, which is entirely natural in a diverse HE ecosystem where students gravitate toward environments that resonate with their identities and expectations.

These systemic forces lie largely outside Durham’s control, and changing the feedback loop requires more than procedural reform. It demands narrative change within the social networks where ideas of belonging are first formed, and a commitment to ensuring that the lived experiences of contextual students at Durham are positive and affirming. Building stronger partnerships with schools can help shift these early perceptions, while amplifying the stories and experiences of students from diverse backgrounds can offer powerful, alternative points of identification. Applicants make decisions based not just on information, but on a deep, intuitive sense of whether a place feels like it’s for “people like us”. This cannot be achieved through admissions policy, strategy, or marketing alone. Institutions can also look to examples such as the University of Bristol, which has reshaped its entrant pool through doing exactly this. Their efforts have influenced not only who feels able to apply, but who can genuinely imagine themselves thriving within the institution, resulting in a gradual shift in their niche.

Proposal for new metrics

If we evaluate universities on metrics that assume they control demand, we will misread both the problem and the solution. In the short term, universities cannot determine who chooses to apply, but they can influence who feels confident enough to accept an offer, which may, as seen with Bristol, create gradual shifts in the entrant pool over time. Universities can and should work to broaden their niches, yet Organisational Ecology reminds us that institutions rarely move far from their point of peak appeal, meaning Durham’s niche is likely to remain relatively stable and only widen at the margins. Expecting rapid transformation would be like assuming a population adapted to the Arctic could swiftly relocate to the Caribbean. That’s not saying it’s not possible, but it is not fast. Any substantial change in who feels an affinity with Durham will likewise unfold slowly, as cultural experiences and social narratives evolve. In the meantime, improving the lived experience of contextual students, and seeing this reflected in rising conversion rates, is the most realistic and meaningful early sign of movement within the niche. This stability also means that proportion-based performance measures will continue to make the University appear as though it is underperforming, even when it is behaving exactly as expected within its ecological position. Durham has added complexities in that it will always occupy a relatively small share of the HE market because the physical constraints of Durham City limit expansion. This adds presents further broadening of the niche simply because they can’t change by admitting more students.

Therefore, metrics focused solely on broad institutional demand will never fully capture the dynamics of access or institutional “progress”. However, rising conversions – from offer to firm acceptance or offer to entry – among contextual students would signal a growing sense of fit, belonging, or affinity. And even if these students never form a majority, improving conversion is a meaningful and realistic way to measure widening participation progress, because it focuses on what an institution can actually influence, the student experience.

To take these social forces seriously, and to acknowledge that a healthy HE system depends on a diversity of institutions meeting the diverse needs of students, we need metrics that reflect audience attraction and demand dynamics. Current proportion-based measures, fail to capture these realities. Instead, I propose:

  • Because Russell Group institutions occupy a similar position in the Blau Space (they attract applicants with comparable social, cultural, and educational characteristics), organisational ecology theory suggests they compete in neighbouring overlapping niches. This means that isolated widening participation initiatives at a single institution may simply redistribute socially advantaged applicants across the group rather than increase diversity overall. Coordinated widening participation strategies across the Russell Group would therefore reduce competitive displacement and support genuine, sector-wide broadening of access.
  • Introduce regulatory metrics that reward successful conversion, for example offer-to-firm-acceptance rates for underrepresented groups, rather than focusing solely on offers or entrant proportions. This would bring cultural belonging into WP evaluation by capturing the fact that where these students accept an offer and enter, there is likely be a greater sense of affinity, a place where they feel they can “fit”, belong, and succeed.
  • Measure and report the impact of cross-institution outreach among universities with similar audience profiles, recognising that widening participation is driven by sector-level dynamics rather than isolated institutional efforts.
  • Track behavioural demand patterns (such as firm-choice decisions) across groups of institutions to reveal how social signalling influences applicant preferences.

The future of access lies in changing what we measure—and what we tell ourselves

Universities often feel they are held solely accountable for widening access, yet my research demonstrates that applicant perceptions, social networks, and systemic hierarchies play an equally powerful role. The most important conclusion of this research is that access outcomes are co-produced. Universities are not solely responsible for entrant composition; applicants are active agents whose perceptions and choices shape institutional realities. To make meaningful change, we need approaches that reflect this distributed responsibility. To make real progress, we must rethink both the metrics we prioritise and the narratives we reproduce.

Fair admissions processes matter – but without addressing the social dynamics shaping applicant behaviour, procedural fairness alone will never deliver equitable outcomes. By shifting the sector’s focus to behavioural metrics and narrative change, we can begin to challenge the feedback loops that sustain exclusivity and move toward a system where access is genuinely a collaborative effort.

Durham University may never appeal to more than a small share of the applicant pool, but perhaps the real measure of success is ensuring that those who do not fit the perceived mould feel confident enough to accept and enter. Ecosystems flourish through diversity, and so does HE; no single institution can – or should – meet every need. Our responsibility is to keep access fair, to reshape the narratives that limit choice, and to support those who want to join us to feel that they truly belong. In focusing on this conversion (from offer to entrant) we move toward a more honest and sustainable understanding of what widening participation success looks like. We cannot control the applicant pool, but we can influence the student experience, the narratives that spread through their networks, and their confidence in imagining themselves belonging here.

Dr Kate Ayres is a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA) with a DBA from Durham University, where her research explored market niches and widening participation in UK HE through organisational ecology using quantitative methods. She has worked across finance, academic, and project management roles in UK Higher Education, including positions at Durham University and the University of Oxford. Kate currently serves as an Academic Mentor on the Senior Leaders Apprenticeship at Durham University Business School. Her work brings together analytical insight, organisational experience, and a commitment to improving HE culture. She also co-manages and sings with the Durham University Staff Chamber Choir, which she founded.


by Leave a comment

Promoting access to higher education worldwide

by Graeme Atherton

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.


by 2 Comments

Open universities: between radical promise and market reality

by Ourania Filippakou

Open universities have long symbolised a radical departure from the exclusivity of conventional universities. Conceived as institutions of access, intellectual emancipation, and social transformation, they promised to disrupt rigid academic hierarchies and democratise knowledge. Yet, as higher education is increasingly reshaped by market logics, can open universities still claim to be engines of social progress, or have they become institutions that now reproduce the very inequalities they sought to dismantle?

This question is not merely academic; it is profoundly political. Across the globe, democratic institutions are under siege, and the erosion of democracy is no longer an abstraction – it is unfolding in real time (cf EIU, 2024; Jones, 2025). The rise of far-right ideologies, resurgent racism, intensified attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and the erosion of protections for migrants and marginalised communities all point to a crisis of democracy that cannot be separated from the crisis of education (Giroux, 2025). As Giroux (1984) argues, education is never neutral; it can operate as both a potential site for fostering critical consciousness and resistance and a mechanism for reproducing systems of social control and domination. Similarly, Butler (2005) reminds us that the very categories of who counts as human, who is deemed grievable, and whose knowledge is legitimised are deeply political struggles.

Open universities, once heralded as radical interventions in knowledge production, now find themselves entangled in these struggles. Increasingly, they are forced to reconcile their egalitarian aspirations with the ruthless pressures of neoliberalism and market-driven reforms. The challenge they face is no less than existential: to what extent can they uphold their role as spaces of intellectual and social transformation, or will they become further absorbed into the logics of commodification and control?

My article (Filippakou, 2025) in Policy Reviews in Higher Education, ‘Two ideologies of openness: a comparative analysis of the Open Universities in the UK and Greece’, foregrounds a crucial but often overlooked dimension: the ideological battles that have shaped open universities over time. The UK Open University (OU) and the Hellenic Open University (HOU) exemplify two distinct yet converging trajectories. The UK OU, founded in the 1960s as part of a broader post-war commitment to social mobility, was a political project – an experiment in making university education available to those long excluded from elite institutions. The HOU, by contrast, emerged in the late 1990s within the European Union’s push for a knowledge economy, where lifelong learning was increasingly framed primarily in terms of workforce development. While both institutions embraced ‘openness’ as a defining principle, the meaning of that openness has shifted – from an egalitarian vision of education as a public good to a model struggling to reconcile social inclusion with neoliberal imperatives.

A key insight of this analysis is that open universities do not merely widen participation; they reflect deeper contestations over the purpose of higher education itself. The UK OU’s early success inspired similar models worldwide, but today, relentless marketisation – rising tuition fees, budget cuts, and the growing encroachment of corporate interests – threatens to erode its founding ethos.

Meanwhile, the HOU was shaped by a European policy landscape that framed openness not merely as intellectual emancipation but as economic necessity. Both cases illustrate the paradox of open universities: they continue to expand access, yet their structural constraints increasingly align them with the logic of precarity, credentialism, and market-driven efficiency.

This struggle over education is central to the survival of democracy. Arendt (1961, 2005) warned that democracy is not self-sustaining; it depends on an informed citizenry capable of judgment, debate, and resistance. Higher education, in this sense, is not simply about skills or employability – it is about cultivating the capacity to think critically, to challenge authority, and to hold power to account (Giroux, 2019). Open universities were once at the forefront of this democratic mission. But as universities in general, and open universities in particular, become increasingly instrumentalised – shaped by political forces intent on suppressing dissent, commodifying learning, and hollowing out universities’ transformative potential – their role in sustaining democratic publics is under threat.

The real question, then, is not simply whether open universities remain ‘open’ but how they define and enact this openness. To what extent do they serve as institutions of intellectual and civic transformation, or have they primarily been reduced to flexible degree factories, catering to market demands under the guise of accessibility? By comparing the UK and Greek experiences, this article aims to challenge readers to rethink the ideological stakes of openness in higher education today. The implications extend far beyond open universities themselves. The broader appeal of this analysis lies in its relevance to anyone interested in universities as sites of social change. Open universities are not just alternatives to conventional universities – they represent larger struggles over knowledge, democracy, and economic power. The creeping normalisation of authoritarian politics, the suppression of academic freedom, and the assault on marginalised voices in public discourse demand that we reclaim higher education as a site of resistance.

Can open universities reclaim their radical promise? If higher education is to resist the encroachment of neoliberalism and reactionary politics, we must actively defend institutions that prioritise intellectual freedom, civic literacy, and higher education for the public good. The future of open universities – and higher education itself – depends not only on institutional policies but on whether scholars, educators, and students collectively resist these forces. The battle for openness is not just about access; it is about the kind of society we choose to build – for ourselves and the generations to come.

Ourania Filippakou is a Professor of Education at Brunel University of London. Her research interrogates the politics of higher education, examining universities as contested spaces where power, inequality, and resistance intersect. Rooted in critical traditions, she explores how higher education can foster social justice, equity, and transformative change.


by Leave a comment

Second-generation student borrowers

by Ariane de Gayardon

Since the 1980s, massification, policy shifts, and changing ideas about who benefits from higher education have led to the expansion of national student loan schemes globally. For instance, student loans were introduced in England in 1990 and generalized in 1998. Australia introduced income-contingent student loans in the late 1980s. While federal student loans were introduced in the US in 1958, their number and the amount of individual student loan debt ramped up in the 1990s.

A lot of academic research has analysed this trend, evaluating the effect of student loans on access, retention, success, the student experience, and even graduate outcomes. Yet, this research is based on the choices and experiences of first-generation student borrowers and might not apply to current and future students.

First-generation borrowers enter higher education with parents who have either not been to higher education, or who have a tertiary degree that pre-dates the expansion of student loans. The parents of first-generation borrowers therefore did not take up loans to pay for their higher education and had no associated repayment burden in adulthood. Any cost associated with these parents’ studies will likely have been shouldered by their families or through grants.

Second-generation borrowers are the offspring of first-generation borrowers. Their parents took out student loans to pay for their own higher education. The choices made by second-generation borrowers when it comes to higher education and its funding could significantly differ from first-generation borrowers, because they are impacted by their parents’ own experience with student loans.

Parents and parental experience indeed play an important role in children’s higher education choices and financial decisions. On the one hand, parents can provide financial or in-kind support for higher education. This is most evident in the design of student funding policies which often integrate parental income and financial contributions. In many countries, eligibility for financial aid is means-tested and based on family income (Williams & Usher, 2022). Examples include the US where an Expected Family Contribution is calculated upon assessment of financial need, or Germany where the financial aid system is based on a legal obligation for parents to contribute to their children’s study costs. Indeed, evidence shows that parents do contribute to students’ income. In Europe, family contributions make up nearly half of students’ income (Hauschildt et al, 2018). But the role of parents also extends to decisions about student loans: parents tend to try and shield their children from student debt, helping them financially when possible or encouraging cost-saving behaviour (West et al, 2015).

On the other hand, parents transmit financial values to their children, which might play a role in their higher education decisions. Family financial socialization theory states that children learn their financial attitudes and behaviour from their parents, through direct teaching and via family interactions and relationships (Gudmunson & Danes, 2011). Studies indeed show the intergenerational transmission of social norms and economic preferences (Maccoby, 1992), including attitudes towards general debt (Almenberg et al, 2021). Continuity of financial values over generations has been observed in the specific case of higher education. Parents who received parental financial support for their own studies are more likely to contribute toward their children’s studies (Steelman & Powell, 1991). For some students, negative parental experiences with general debt can lead to extreme student debt aversion (Zerquera et al,2016).

As countries globally rely increasingly on student loans to fund higher education, many more students will become second-generation borrowers. Because their parents had to repay their own student debt, the family’s financial assets may be depleted, potentially leading to reduced levels of parental financial support for higher education. This is likely to be even worse for students whose parents are still repaying their loans. In addition, parental experiences of student debt could influence the advice they give their children with regard to higher education financial decisions. As a result, this new generation of student borrowers will face challenges that their predecessors did not, fuelled by the transmitted experience of student loans from their parents (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Parental influence on second-generation borrowers

As the share of second-generation borrowers in the student body increases, the need to understand the decision-making process of these students when it comes to (financial) higher education choices is essential. Although the challenges faced by borrowers will emerge at different times and with varying intensity across countries — depending in part on loan repayment formats — we have an opportunity now to be ahead of the curve. By researching this new generation of student borrowers and their parents, we can better assess their financial dilemmas and the support they need, providing further evidence to design future-proof equitable student funding policies.

Ariane de Gayardon is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) based at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.


by Leave a comment

Admissions tutors’ perspectives on widening access to selective STEM degrees

by Eliel Cohen, Camille Kandiko Howson and Julianne Viola

This blog follows a project supported by the UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund, involving interviews with admissions tutors and staff in department-based admissions decisions in STEM fields at Imperial College London, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the three most selective higher education institutions in England. A project report for the full study is available here. 

Admissions decisions at more selective universities are often made ‘locally’, that is by disciplinary-based academics who will likely be directly involved in teaching students. Given such autonomy, we join Steven Jones, Dave Hall and Joanna Bragg in foregrounding localised admissions practices as key sites of study for understanding widening participation practices and outcomes. In March and April 2020 we conducted eight interviews with individuals holding admissions tutor (or similar) roles in STEM courses at three elite English universities (the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Imperial College London).

This post summarises key findings, emphasising that admissions tutors’ perceptions, priorities and practices are often disjointed and disconnected from wider institutional and national policies, grounded in a conservative ethos which slows down the widening of access to selective STEM degrees.

There is fairness and there is ‘fairness’

Fairness was a key theme in our interviews, with all but one participant using the word ‘fair’ or ‘fairness’ explicitly when discussing the key principles of admissions. However, ‘fairness’ tended to have two main meanings which not only differed from but could actively contradict each other. Marginson discusses these contrasting notions of fairness in access to higher education in terms of the competing philosophical traditions to which they relate, drawing on the likes of John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Our findings more closely match the more procedure-focused tradition that Marginson identifies as ‘equity as fairness’, as opposed to the more outcomes focused tradition of ‘equity as inclusion’.

The first and dominant view referred to equal treatment of applicants. This procedural meaning of fairness is not an end in itself but more a means towards ensuring that other admissions priorities were achieved consistently and transparently. First among these was identifying and admitting those applicants with the greatest ‘potential’. We found strong evidence of what has elsewhere been referred to as the potential-based perspective amongst our participants, who consistently used words like ‘high-potential’, ‘high-ability’, or simply ‘the best’ to describe the kinds of students they prioritised and targeted in admissions.

This notion of fairness as a characteristic of procedures which will unproblematically reveal the ‘best’ applicants not only differs from, but can undermine the secondary notion of fairness, one grounded in social justice – in other words, fairness in terms of greater equality of outcomes regardless of one’s background. Some of our participants exhibited at least implicit awareness that there was a potential contradiction between these two notions of fairness, since it is often difficult to see the potential in applicants from less advantaged backgrounds.

On the whole, participants did not see widening participation as a top priority, feeling that there were limits to the extent to which they should be using their role and finite resources to address social inequalities.

Disconnect between admissions policy and practice

The widening participation agenda of the past two decades, and especially the more recent focus on contextualised admissions, implies a shift in admissions practices. Perhaps most obviously it suggests an approach which no longer simply prioritises and privileges those students with easily demonstrable ‘potential’ but rather assesses all applicants’ attainments and abilities in light of the very different contexts in which they have been brought up and educated.

However, what became clear in our interviews was that admissions tutors’ actions and decisions are rarely grounded in the widening participation goals announced by governing bodies and institutional Access and Participation Plans (APP). Rather, in most cases they fell back on what seemed appropriate to their own local context. This resulted in practices which, although sometimes innovative and effective, were disjointed and disconnected from broader widening participation policies and sometimes even counter to them.

For example, some participants said that they might prioritise applicants based on their gender, nationality (but not ethnicity) or age in order to improve the perceived ‘balance’ in their localised cohort, despite no official policies asking them to do so. Other participants felt that any consideration of gender (and protected characteristics more generally) was inappropriate and potentially unlawful.

While we are sympathetic about an interest in a balanced cohort, our findings highlight that admissions decisions are sometimes made on the basis of localised and idiosyncratic perceptions and priorities rather than institutional or national policy. It is not clear, for example, whether a marginal offer would be more likely made to an applicant whose background contributed to perceived ‘cohort balance’ or to an applicant from a widening participation background.

Risk-aversion and the need for data and evaluation

Although all participants expressed support for widening participation in general, they were generally risk-averse in terms of how far they felt widening participation should go. For example, most of our participants were actively or even strongly against lowering grade offers for widening participation students. This view was justified in various ways, for example in terms of concerns about the need to maintain standards of the students and the curriculum, the perceived ‘extra support’ that students admitted on such a basis may require, and the concern that such students would be more likely to perform poorly or drop out. These views were despite an absence of evidence that students admitted on a contextual basis performed worse than other students. This risk-aversion or conservative ethos seems to be a common response to localised admissions decision making.

However, some of our participants acknowledged that one thing preventing them from being able to overcome this risk-aversion was a lack of data monitoring the performance of widening participation students, ideally broken down to the level of students admitted partially on the basis of widening participation and contextual information. Anecdotally, we have reason to believe that this would show that more could be done to widen access, including the increase of lower contextualised offers, without it affecting standards. If nothing else, these data could support evaluation of outcomes of specific admissions practices.

Admissions in England in 2020 were severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Whatever new models or workarounds may emerge in the future, evidence suggests that there will continue to be a role for relatively autonomous admissions tutors in selective institutions. Our findings suggest that the sector needs to reflect on how to account for the institutionally situated perceptions and behaviours of admissions tutors if it is going to continue its widening access objectives in the future.

SRHE member Dr Eliel Cohen is a sociologist of education and a research associate at Imperial College London. His forthcoming book with Routledge investigates whether universities in the twenty-first century are thriving or just surviving through an analysis of academic boundaries and boundary-crossing activities.  

SRHE member Dr Camille Kandiko HowsonisAssociate Professor of Education in the Centre for Higher Education Research & Scholarship (CHERS) at Imperial College London. She is an international expert in higher education research with a focus on student engagement; student outcomes and learning gain; quality, performance and accountability; and gender and prestige in academic work.

Dr Julianne Viola is a social scientist specialising in young people’s civic identity development, efficacy, and engagement with their communities. Her book, Young People’s Civic Identity in the Digital Age (Palgrave 2020) focuses on experiences of young people living in the USA at a unique time in the nation’s history, and calls for the reinvigoration of civic education for the digital age. Julianne earned her doctorate at the University of Oxford and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London.


by Leave a comment

Paid, unpaid and hidden internships: still a barrier to social mobility

By Wil Hunt

New evidence suggests graduates from less privileged backgrounds are still at risk of being locked out of certain key industries such as cultural, political and extraterritorial organisations, the media and legal professions. Graduate internships have been the subject of considerable debate for more than ten years. Yet, despite media and policy interest on the topic there is still a lack of generalisable quantitative data on the prevalence of the practice and, particularly, on the question as to whether some groups are being excluded. Back in 2009, the final report of the Panel for Fair Access to the Professions (Milburn, 2009) argued that taking part in an internship after leaving university was often an ‘essential’ first career step in many professions but raised concerns that access was often a question of who you know, not what you know, and whether graduates had the financial means to work for free for a significant period of time.

Fast forward eleven years and while there has been some research on the topic there have still only been generalisable quantitative studies looking at graduate internships in the UK. This is in no small part down to the fact that the main statutory surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey, fail to capture internships as a separate employment category. The Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey, has been one notable exception to this, capturing internships since the 2011/12 graduating cohort. Other exceptions include the Futuretrack study, which has followed a cohort of first degree applicants since applying to university in 2006, and one or two one-off surveys.

Studies using data from these sources have shown that unpaid internships do not confer the same advantages as paid internships or university work placements in accessing the best jobs, have a negative impact on earnings and may even reduce the chances of having a graduate job in the short to medium term (Purcell et al, 2012; Holford, 2017; Hunt, 2016). Thus, unpaid graduate internships may not be the ‘invaluable’ ‘leg-up’ claimed by some MPs when talking out the 2016 private members bill that sought to outlaw unpaid internships (Hansard, 4 November col 1156-1226). The same quantitative studies also suggest that access to internships is moulded by a range of factors including social class and educational background, although not always in the way one might expect (Hunt and Scott, 2018).

More recent attempts to assess the situation have been hampered by the measurement problems noted above. The Sutton Trust have made two commendable attempts to estimate participation internships at six months after graduation using the DLHE for the 2012/13 and 2015/16 cohorts (Sutton Trust, 2014; Montacute, 2018). However, these studies underestimated the proportion of unpaid internships by not fully accounting for item non-response in questions about pay in the DLHE and not measuring internships reported as ‘voluntary’ jobs. Examples of ‘voluntary’ jobs identified in the 2011/12 DLHE included: web design and development professionals; conservation professionals; legal professionals; management consultants; journalists; PR professionals; architects; and artists (Hunt and Scott, 2020). Hardly the kinds of work for good causes the voluntary work exception in minimum wage legislation was intended to preclude (Pyper, 2015). When these ‘hidden’ internships were counted in the 2011/12 DLHE 58% of graduates doing an internship at six months after graduation were unpaid – far more than previously estimated (Hunt and Scott, 2020).

Now the DLHE has been replaced by the Graduate Outcomes survey we will only know about graduate internships occurring at 15 months after graduation, after many have been completed. The 2016/17 DLHE, therefore, represents an opportunity to reassess the situation and see how things have changed since 2011/12. The current analysis of the 2016/17 DLHE, funded by SRHE, shows that while the number and proportion of graduates doing an internship at six months after graduation is the same as for the 2011/12 cohort, the number of ‘hidden’ internships has halved from 1,375 to 650 and the proportion of internships that are unpaid has declined from 58% to 36%.

Whilst the decline in unpaid internships is welcome, they still account for more than a third of internships at six months after graduation and this figure is substantially higher in certain key industries and occupations, such as:

  • activities of extraterritorial organisations (eg EC, UN, OECD) (92%);
  • membership organisations (which would include unions and political parties) (70%);
  • libraries, museums and cultural activities (69%);
  • programming and broadcasting (69%);
  • legal associate professionals (69%);
  • conservation and environmental associate professionals (67%); and
  • government and related administrative occupations (including NGOs) (63%).

Findings from other, less generalisable, surveys suggests that the number of graduates engaging in an internship at some point is only likely to increase during the first few years after graduation and, again, many of these are likely to be unpaid (Hunt and Scott, 2018; Cullinane and Montacute, 2018). The most striking findings from the current research, however, are from the multivariate analysis of participation patterns. This analysis shows that, after controlling for the other factors in the analysis, having better grades or studying at a prestigious university increases the chances of securing a paid internship six months after graduation, whereas coming from a higher socio-economic background increases the odds of doing an unpaid internship.

These findings show that, whilst unpaid internships appear to be declining in most sectors, they are still a key access route in some key industries and occupations and that this is likely to present a barrier to entry for less privileged graduates. The fact that graduates with better grades or from more prestigious institutions are more likely to do the paid internships reinforces findings from previous studies that suggest paid internships are more competitive and sought after. The findings also show that participation in graduate internships, paid or unpaid, is more commonplace in less vocational subjects, such as mass communication and documentation, historical and philosophical studies and creative arts and design. This may suggest that graduates of these subjects feel more need to supplement their educational qualifications with internships to ‘get ahead’ in an increasingly competitive graduate labour market.

Dr Wil Hunt is a Research Fellow at the ESRC-funded Digit Research Centre at the University of Sussex. His research interests centre around the higher education, the graduate Labour market and the impact of new digital technologies on the world of work.

This blog reports on research funded by SRHE as one of its 2018 Member Award projects.

References

Cullinane, C and Montacute, R (2018) Pay as You Go? Internship pay, quality and access in the graduate jobs market London: The Sutton Trust

Hansard HC Deb vol 616 col 1156-1226 (4 November 2016) National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill [Electronic Version]

Holford, A (2017) Access to and Returns from Unpaid Graduate Internships IZA Discussion Paper No 10845 Bonn: IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Hunt, W (2016) Internships and the Graduate Labour Market PhD thesis, University of Portsmouth

Hunt, W and Scott, P (2018) ‘Participation in paid and unpaid internships among creative and communications graduates: does class advantage play a part?’ In Waller, R Ingram, N and Ward, M (2018) (Eds.) Degrees of Injustice: Social Class Inequalities in University Admissions, Experiences and Outcomes London: BSA/Routledge

Hunt, W and Scott, P (2020) ‘Paid and unpaid graduate internships: prevalence, quality and motivations at six months after graduation’ Studies in Higher Education 45(2): 464-476

Milburn, A (chair) (2009) Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions London: The Stationery Office

Montacute, R (2018) Internships – Unpaid, unadvertised, unfair Research Brief London: The Sutton Trust

Purcell, K, Elias, P, Atfield, G, Behle, H, Ellison, R, Luchinskaya, D, … Tzanakou, C (2012) Futuretrack Stage 4: Transitions into employment, further study and other outcomes (Full Report). (HECSU Research Report) Manchester: Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HECSU)

Pyper, D (2015) The National Minimum Wage: volunteers and interns. Briefing Paper Number 00697. London: House of Commons Library.

Sutton Trust (2014). Internship or Indenture? Research Brief London: The Sutton Trust


by Leave a comment

Mind the Gap – Gendered and Caste-based Disparities in Access to Conference Opportunities

In an interview with Conference Inference [1] editor Emily Henderson, Nidhi S. Sabharwal discussed inequalities of access to conference opportunities in India.

Figure 1: Participation in Conferences by Gender (in a high-prestige institution)Figure 1: Participation in Conferences by Gender (in a high-prestige institution)

EH: Nidhi, can you explain first of all where conferences come into your wider research on inequalities in Indian higher education?

NS: Equitable access to professional development opportunities such as conferences is an indicator of institutional commitment to achieving diversity and inclusion of diverse social groups on campuses. Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

The deaf delegate – experiences of space and time in the conference (BSL version included)

By Dai O’Brien

In this post, Dai O’Brien discusses spatial and temporal challenges that deaf academics face when attending conferences, and presents some preliminary thoughts from his funded research project on deaf academics. This post is accompanied by a filmed version of this post in British Sign Language.

Access the British Sign Language version of this post here.

Attending conferences is all about sharing information, making those contacts which can help you with research ideas, writing projects and so on. This is the ideal. However, Continue reading →

Ian Mc Nay


by Leave a comment

Applications to UK universities: digging beyond the headlines…

By Ian McNay

‘Record numbers apply to enter higher education’ was the good news reported at the end of the first application period in January by most papers – I have not seen one to query this, but I have not checked them all. The March figures are now out, almost unreported, and confirm what was true in January: applications are up on last year, by just over 2 per cent. The increase for the UK is lower than that, at about 1.6 per cent.

That is good, but the claim of a record depends what you count and compare with. The secondary headline was that this record showed that high fee levels had had no impact, implying that the record applied where fees had been raised. Not true. Continue reading →