From goodwill to obligation: making equity systemic in higher education

This blog was kindly authored by Afzal Munna, Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull London.

There is a familiar pattern in higher education equity debates. Persistent disparities are acknowledged. Frameworks, strategies and guidance documents proliferate. Responsibility is shared so widely that, in practice, it is owned by no one. Progress depends on goodwill, isolated champions and optional initiatives – many of which work locally, briefly, or unevenly.

Equity in higher education is a widely endorsed in principle, but inconsistently delivered in practice, and too often framed as a problem of individual deficit rather than structural design.

The problem with deficit thinking

Much of the equity work in universities is implicitly micro-focused. Students are supported to be more confident, more resilient and more academically prepared. Study skills workshops, mentoring schemes and induction programmes are rolled out – often with good intentions and positive local effects. But, this framing assumes the core system is neutral and that inequity emerges primarily from student characteristics. Evidence suggests otherwise. For migrant and international students in particular, access to higher education has improved significantly, yet participation, belonging and continuation remain uneven. The issue is not simply who students are, but how institutional routines interact with their identities. Equity problems, in other words, are not located in students. They are produced through misalignments between learners’ lived experiences and the assumptions embedded in curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment and institutional policy.

Equity as a systemic property

My doctoral research responds to this challenge through the Intersectional–Multilevel Equity (IME) model, which reframes equity as a system-level outcome rather than a collection of individual interventions.

The IME model identifies three interdependent levels of the higher education system:

• Micro: students’ relationships, sense of belonging, language use, confidence and access to social resources.
• Meso: curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment practices, induction, mentoring and classroom culture.
• Macro: institutional strategies, resourcing, workload allocation, regulatory frameworks and staff development.

Equity emerges – or fails – through the alignment (or misalignment) of these layers. Treating any one level as sufficient is an error.

What the evidence shows

Using a mixed and integrative methodology this research made visible how intersecting identities (such as migration status, language background and socio-economic positioning) operate differently across educational contexts.

Several patterns stood out.

First, mentoring and peer-support schemes were most effective when embedded within inclusive curriculum practices, rather than positioned as compensatory add-ons. Where mentoring was disconnected from teaching and assessment design, its impact was limited. Second, assessment transparency mattered more than assessment type. Clear exemplars, scaffolded tasks and explicit success criteria significantly reduced linguistic and cultural disadvantage, without lowering academic standards.

Third, staff development focused on equity was most impactful when linked to everyday teaching decisions – not abstract principles. Lecturers reported increased confidence navigating diverse classrooms when institutional signals, workload planning and professional learning were aligned.

Finally, student voice was not simply consultative but corrective. Interventions designed with students better reflected lived barriers and produced more relevant solutions.

Why alignment matters

The central lesson is that equity initiatives succeed or fail based on cross-level coherence. When micro-level support (such as study skills provision) is separated from meso-level curriculum design, students are asked to adapt to systems that remain unchanged. When macro-level strategies set ambitious targets without resourcing or accountability mechanisms, implementation becomes symbolic rather than structural. Systemic change requires resetting the baseline – from optional good practice to expected responsibility. In higher education, equity is too often treated as aspirational rather than operational.

From aspiration to obligation

This is not an argument for micromanagement or rigid standardisation – a systemic approach to equity does not script teaching. Instead, it establishes a minimum floor of responsibility, below which institutions should not fall.

Practically, this means:

• Co-designing induction and mentoring with students to support early belonging.
• Auditing assessments for fairness and transparency, not merely outcomes.
• Embedding students’ cultural and linguistic experiences into disciplinary teaching.
• Linking equity-focused staff development to programme-level planning.
• Ensuring institutional strategies are resourced, evaluated and visible in classroom practice.

None of these actions are radical in isolation. Their transformative potential lies in their alignment.

Conclusion

Equity in higher education will not be achieved through isolated initiatives, goodwill alone or perpetual pilots. Like other forms of safety and responsibility, it requires systemic expectation, structural coherence and institutional ownership. The IME model does not offer a silver bullet. It offers a reframing: equity as something institutions do by design, not something students must overcome by resilience. Until higher education stops treating equity as optional, we will continue to recognise the problem, reinvent partial solutions – and find ourselves exactly where we have been before.