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Beyond access: rethinking Gypsy, Roma and Traveller participation in higher education

by Julia Morgan, Hazel Marsh and Colin Clark

Universities often present themselves as institutions committed to equality, diversity and social mobility. However, for many Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, higher education remains a space defined by serious inequalities, poor representation and ongoing forms of exclusion. Despite decades of widening access and participation initiatives, the communities remain largely invisible within university policies, curricula and institutional cultures. Why is this the case? What needs to change?

These questions provide the starting point for our new edited collection, Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in Higher Education: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2026). Bringing together academics, practitioners, students, graduates and community members, the book investigates the structural, cultural and institutional barriers that continue to define educational opportunities and experiences. Critically, it also challenges the assumptions underpinning how universities understand dis/advantage, social inclusion and educational achievement.

Moving beyond the deficit model

One of our core arguments is that discussions about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller participation in higher education have tended to be framed through a ‘deficit’ perspective. That is, low participation is explained by reference to cultural attitudes, family expectations, educational aspirations or supposed community resistance to formal education.Such explanations, we find, are deeply problematic. They locate responsibility for educational inequalities within communities themselves rather than examining the institutions and social structures that reproduce and amplify educational disadvantage.

The contributors to this volume powerfully show why a different approach is fundamentally necessary. Racism, racialisation, historical exclusion, economic insecurity and unequal educational opportunities are not minor or peripheral concerns. They are essential to fully understanding how educational pathways and trajectories emerge and why access to university remains so uneven and unfair.The chapters addressing Romani history, academic-community partnerships, whiteness and experiences of compulsory schooling help establish this wider context and the foundations of the later discussion. They remind us that inequalities faced at university cannot be separated from longer histories of racism, marginalisation, and institutional discrimination.

Questioning the ‘inclusive university’

The collection asks readers to question the assumption that universities are inherently progressive, inclusive, and ‘good’ institutions. Higher education in the UK, and elsewhere, operates within increasingly marketised, commodified, and competitive environments, where widening participation is measured through stark metrics – recruitment figures, institutional targets, performance indicators and the like. Although such measures and data can help support positive change, they can also reduce complex questions of equality and justice to matters of institutional compliance. This raises a very important question: are universities genuinely transforming themselves to accommodate historically excluded communities, or simply expecting those communities to adapt to existing institutional norms?

This distinction, we argue, matters. Increasing student numbers is important, but participation cannot be understood only through the prism of entry qualifications, admissions, or progression and retention statistics. It must include belonging, recognition, intellectual representation, student wellbeing, and opportunities beyond graduation day. Contributions to the book that examine the neoliberal university, widening participation, distance learning and career guidance shine a spotlight on the limitations of approaches that prioritise access without considering the experiences that follow.

The vitality of lived experience

We believe that a distinctive feature of this collection is its commitment to bringing community voices into a direct conversation with academic research and institutional practices. Deeply moving, powerful, and personal accounts from Gypsy, Roma, Traveller and Showmen contributors show the complicated relationships between educational achievement, identity, belonging and social mobility. These contributions confront ‘heroic’ narratives of individual success against the odds. While such educational achievements must be celebrated, exceptional personal journeys must not become substitutes for confronting systemic inequality. It is a truism that the language of ‘resilience’ can obscure the conditions that make such resilience necessary.

We also appreciate that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are not homogeneous. Experiences can differ greatly across ethnic identities, national contexts, gender, class, migration histories, languages, and family circumstances. Effective widening participation policies must acknowledge these differences rather than reproduce an artificial sense of community uniformity.

Decolonising knowledge and challenging institutional power

Another important theme of the book concerns whose histories, knowledge and experiences are recognised within higher education. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have too often been represented as objects of academic investigation rather than as producers of knowledge in their own right. Their histories and intellectual contributions remain marginal within many university curricula. Chapters addressing decolonisation and community cultural wealth query this imbalance. They encourage universities to reconsider not only what is taught, but who determines what counts as ‘legitimate’ knowledge.

This requires a lot more than adding occasional references to Romani history or celebrating cultural diversity through isolated initiatives. It demands sustained engagement with questions of representation, institutional power, epistemic injustice, and meaningful community participation. As such, universities must be prepared to learn from communities rather than simply conduct research about them.

From partial recognition to meaningful change

What does this book not do? We do not argue that this collection provides a comprehensive solution to the inequalities it identifies. Indeed, one of its important contributions is to expose the limitations of existing knowledge and practice. This book is about beginning an informed discussion of where we are, and where we need to get to.

As such, further sustained longitudinal research is required to understand educational journeys across different stages of life. Far greater comparative work is required to explore differences between national higher education systems. We also need better evidence concerning the effectiveness of institutional interventions, particularly those designed to support progression, retention, and graduate employment.

There is certainly a pressing need to move beyond short-term projects and individual institutional champions towards properly resourced, accountable and sustained structural change.

One significant step forward would be recognising anti-Gypsyism and anti-Roma racism as institutional concerns, embedding community participation within university decision-making, improving educational and careers support, and ensuring that curricula reflect the histories and contributions of marginalised communities. Ultimately, moving forwards, our question is quite simple: what kinds of universities are we asking Gypsy, Roma and Traveller students to attend? If higher education is truly committed to social justice, it must be willing to interrogate its own practices, assumptions, and inequalities.

Our hope is that this book contributes to that conversation, helping to shift the debate from access and aspiration towards recognition, belonging, and institutional transformation. For sure, the responsibility for change cannot rest with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities alone. It must also rest with the universities that have historically excluded them.

Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in Higher Education: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Julia Morgan, Hazel Marsh and Colin Clark, was published by Routledge in October 2026. Further details here.

Dr Julia Morgan is Professor of Global Health and Wellbeing at the University of Greenwich and Deputy Director of the UBEL ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership. She has undertaken two research projects examining the under-representation and experiences of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in higher education and has co-edited a handbook on developing good practice in the sector. Alongside Hazel Marsh and Allison Hulmes, she has been commissioned by King’s College London to produce a best practice guide for universities and their staff on supporting Gypsy, Roma and Traveller students.

Hazel Marsh is Professor of Cultural Politics at the University of East Anglia. Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on issues concerning social justice; education, health and environmental inequalities; the politics of representation; popular music and politics; Romani and Traveller contributions to society. Recent projects include ‘Strengthening Romani Capacity in Colombia’, ‘Embedding Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month in the Public History Calendar’, and ‘Romani and Traveller Voices in Music Archives’. She has collaborated with Patrin Films to co-produce the short film A Basket Full of Eggs (Lisa Smith, 2025). 

Professor Colin Clark is Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) and Professor of Sociology and Social Policy in the Faculty of Health, Education, and Social Care at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). Colin has over 30 years of experience working in higher education, having previously held academic positions at the universities of Glasgow, Newcastle, and Strathclyde, before joining UWS in 2013. Colin’s research interests encompass ethnic and racial studies, social inequalities, identity, citizenship, migration, and mobility, with expertise in the lives, experiences, and rights of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities in central and Eastern Europe and the UK. His work demonstrates a strong commitment to social justice, equality, and the development of inclusive and anti-racist public policy. Outside of UWS, Colin is a director of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, a trustee of Romano Law (Roma Voice), and an elected member of the Barvalipe Academy of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture. He is also an executive committee member of The Traveller Movement and the Advisory Council for the Education of Romanies and other Travellers. 


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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.


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The increasing pressure on students after Covid-19

by Caroline Jones and Huw Bell

After the pandemic students are facing difficulties linked to health, wellbeing, finances and employment prospects; increased rents, housing shortages, zero hours contracts, the cost-of-living crisis and foodbank usage all of which can affect mental health and wellbeing. This prompted our systematic review article1, which examines topics of student engagement, belonging, alienation and resilience, and specifically identifies pressures on current HE students related to these domains.  The aim of the review was to understand better the tensions faced by HE students following their experiences of educational interruptions due to Covid-19.

Students report higher costs of living, impacting their wellbeing and ability to focus on their studies, with increased stress and a greater need to work to sustain themselves (Sutton Trust, 2023). For example, the Office for National Statistics (2023) reports some students having to skip meals due to the current UK financial crisis, and data from the Student Loans Company found that withdrawals from undergraduate courses in the two years post pandemic are increasing, averaging about 18,300 withdrawals compared to about 15,600 for the preceding three years (HM Government, 2023). While Covid-19 is not the sole cause of the cost of living crisis, it has exacerbated the pressure on students post-Covid. Many HE institutions report the effects of empty classrooms on student learning as they consider new ways of working to bring students back on campus after the pandemic (Dunbar-Morris, 2023).  About 1 in 4 students are at risk of dropping out of their university courses (Jones and Bell, 2024).

Our review found that despite the importance of HE to the development of an educated workforce (Brabner and Hillman, 2023; UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022) and social mobility (Sutton Trust, 2021), there is a feeling that UK HEIs are moving in the wrong direction, with a sense that HE is decreasingly relevant to economic development (UPP Foundation and HEPI, 2022). We argue that institutions must develop resources and processes to help alleviate the burdens students face; the essential first step is understanding what those burdens are.

In our literature search both empirical and non-empirical data were screened for inclusion/exclusion from open and closed databases focusing on key search terms and dates. We also explored the literature relating to the personal, professional, academic, and societal pressures experienced by UK HE students. In total 59 publications were examined covering the period of the pandemic up to 2023. 

The key findings were:

  1. The effects of Covid-19 have increased pressure on HE students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways covering personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life. This directly influences student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing are significantly affecting levels of resilience and coping strategies in personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life, with a direct impact on student retention.
  3. Issues facing the cohort of students currently at school, such as increased stress and anxiety, are likely to affect future HE attendance, engagement, sense of belonging, alienation and resilience.

The findings led to the following recommendations:

  1. Government and HEIs need to do more to address the macro, meso and micro effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the student population, identifying areas of increased pressure for HE students related to the personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of students’ daily life, which directly influence student mental health and wellbeing and thus student engagement.
  2. Further focussed research is needed into post-pandemic institutional support systems and pedagogical strategies to recognise the support that has been implemented to improve students’ mental health and wellbeing.
  3. HEIs could examine the effects of stress and anxiety resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic for future students and consider strategic plans to continue to support a sense of belonging, and resilience practices to reduce alienation and increase student engagement and retention.
  4. HEIs could develop or use new conceptual tools and theories (for example: Jones, 2021; Jones, 2023), to better assess support needs for current and future students.
  5. Strategies to increase students’ resilience and coping skills post-pandemic aligned to personal, professional, academic, and societal aspects of daily life would significantly benefit mental health and wellbeing long term and thus student retention.

The results and recommendations from this systematic literature review are the scaffold for further qualitative research currently being undertaken into the pressures that HE students are experiencing in the wake of Covid-19. Staff and students are taking part in interviews and focus groups to explore the wider contextual issues associated with feelings of pressure relating to personal, professional, academic and societal influences in the post pandemic context. Many universities have invested in and extended their health, wellbeing and student services to support students, demonstrating the sector’s recognition of many of the challenges post Covid-19 students are facing. Our research will look at existing and improving support practices, systems and plans that HEIs are already implementing to support students in recognition of the many disruptions and challenges from the fall out of Covid-19.

Caroline Jonesis an applied social sciences teaching professional with extensive experience working in and across the education sector, including lecturing/programme leading in HE.  Currently employed as a Tutor based within the Health and Education Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University.  Experience of External Examining and Peer Reviewing. Research interests include Leadership and management, risk, resilience and mental health, social mobility and social policy, widening participation and disadvantage. Originator of the Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) theory. Twitter: @caroline_JonesSFHEA. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-jones-1bab40b3/

Dr Huw Bell is Reader in Teaching and Learning at Manchester Metropolitan University. Research focuses on teaching and learning L1 grammar in schools and universities in the UK, teachers’ attitudes to and beliefs about grammar and their impact on teaching, teachers’ enactment of the National Curriculum, and student life post-Covid. Email: h.bell@mmu.ac.uk.

  1. SRHE members can access the full article by logging in to www.srhe.ac.uk > My Account > Access to HE Journals > Taylor & Francis online > Perspectives ↩︎