Introduction
In the last 50 years higher education has expanded substantially in England. While only around one in twenty young people attended a university in the 1960s (CHE, 1963), now more than 40 per cent of each generation goes to university. Such a transformation of higher education was supposed to bring about major improvements in social mobility by providing a route to better jobs and higher income for young people previously unable to access it. Yet in practice the expansion has not allayed concerns about the under-representation of certain types of students in higher education . In particular, it remains the case that young people from poorer backgrounds are very much under-represented, relative to their share of the population as a whole. The need to further widen participation for these poorer students, and indeed for other groups currently under-represented in higher education, therefore remains a pressing policy issue (HM Government, 2010).
Given the extensive evidence that higher education is an important route by which individuals might achieve social mobility, the case for widening participation in higher education is a compelling one. Indeed the recent White Paper dedicated an entire chapter to make the argument that higher education is an important driver of social mobility. Particularly striking about that chapter was how it firmly reaffirmed the government’s commitment to making improvements in relative social mobility – it explicitly states that the policy aim is not just to increase the chances of someone from a lower socio-economic background going to university but to increase their chances relative to their more socio-economically advantaged peers. This is a bold statement: it necessarily implies a decline in the relative chances of a young person from a middle or higher socio-economic status family going to university – a policy unlikely to be popular with their parents. The White Paper is therefore not lacking in ambition. The Paper does acknowledge, however, that there is a long way to go in terms of improving social mobility and indeed in ensuring that higher education plays a key role in our efforts to improve the economic success of those from poorer backgrounds. There is reason to be cautious on this point. Some research has suggested that the chances of a student from a disadvantaged background going to
university actually fell in relative terms during the 1980s and early 1990s, and hence during the period of higher education’s rapid expansion the socio-economic gap in higher education participation worsened (Blanden and Gregg, 2004; Galindo-Rueda et al., 2004; Glennerster, 2001; Machin and Vignoles, 2004). More recent research is more optimistic about whether the socio-economic gap in university enrolment has actually widened (Raffe et al., 2006) but most commentators, including the government, are in agreement that there remains a need for further policy action to widen participation in higher education to students from lower socio-economic groups. Also increasingly clear is that simply expanding the size of higher education does not necessarily lead to major improvements in relative social mobility.
Of course widening participation and the role of higher education in improving social mobility have become more topical issues in light of fears, following the introduction of – and continued increases to – university tuition fees, that we may be pricing poorer students out of higher education. Certainly, the cultural shift from the ‘free at point of use’ system that we had 20 years ago to a system where universities are charging substantial sums, has led many to question whether this will make it even harder to encourage poorer students into higher education. The tuition fee reforms introduced in 2012 have ensured that poorer students continue to receive means- tested financial support for their studies and, even more importantly, that all students do not need to find the means to pay their tuition fees upfront. Despite this, however, the reforms have not assuaged fears that the psychological impact of introducing higher tuition fees will tend to put off poorer students. Going forward, the level of fees and arrangements for their means testing and repayment are also likely to be important factors. When fees were introduced in 1998 the amount charged was low (£1000) and means tested, though students did need to find the fees upfront. Even at that time there were signs that the fear of fees might create a barrier to participation for poorer students (Callender, 2003) and indeed that poorer students were more debt averse (Pennell and West, 2005). In fact, the higher education participation rate of poorer students did not decline after the introduction of fees in the late 1990s, nor did the socio-economic gap in higher education participation widen (Ramsden and Brown, 2007; Wyness, 2009). However, as we enter an era of much higher fees of £7,000 to £8,000 plus, we may not remain so sanguine about their impact (Chowdry et al., 2010).
In this chapter I describe how poorer students remain under-represented in higher education despite the substantial expansion in the proportion of young people going to university. I then explain the significance of this for social mobility and the life chances of young people. I conclude by considering the various policy issues that arise in our attempt to widen participation and discuss the specifics of the proposed policies in the White Paper.