Higher education: the key to reaching new frontiers of an inclusive society
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Stephanie Marshall, Vice Principal (Education) at Queen Mary University of London.
The inequalities that exist across higher education in the UK today have been well documented over recent years. Among contributing factors, there is geographical disparity in terms of progression into higher education; there are inequalities in the quality of education delivered; and there are differences in relation to career prospects after graduation.
In a bid to redress these inequalities, in late 2024, the Government announced one of its key missions: to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’ in the field of education. Among the ways they plan to achieve this, the Government aims to support the ‘aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to go to university’ and improve ‘access to universities and raising teaching standards’.
In parallel, London’s City Hall has recently committed to ‘driving economic growth through a planned regional approach, concentrated around priority high-growth sectors, and has developed an ‘Inclusive Talent Strategy’ that sets out the important role diversity of talent will play in achieving this aim.
What these plans have in common is the premise that higher education will play a key role in ensuring this success. As a Russell Group university with a proud 240-year history of prioritising and pioneering widening participation and social mobility among our local communities, so that any student with the potential to succeed does so, irrespective of their background, we at Queen Mary value this renewed focus by both national and local governments on reducing inequalities in HE and improving graduate outcomes.
I want to highlight two ways in which higher education providers can deliver on the dual policy aims of opportunity and growth, based on Queen Mary’s own institutional journey. The task is not easy, with the wider higher education sector facing very challenging financial headwinds. But universities are, after all, in the business of finding innovative solutions to even the most complex of societal challenges.
Creating an inclusive environment
My first recommendation is to put inclusion at the heart of organisational strategy and purpose. At Queen Mary, the diversity of our student population is something we are particularly proud of. Unique among Russell Group universities, our over 31,000 students on degree programmes are comprised of over 170 nationalities; 91% of our domestic undergraduates are from state schools, 77% from an ethnic minority background, 46% are the first in their family to enter higher education, and 21% were eligible for free school meals.
This diversity does not happen by accident. We work hard to identify students from across London and the UK who have the potential to succeed at a world-leading research-intensive university. Within London, this outreach work includes, among other things, working extensively with schools and colleges across East London; co-sponsoring two Multi-Academy Trusts; being the first Russell Group university to offer degree apprenticeship programmes; and leading programmes such as Queen Mary Futures, which provides additional support for students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education. It is important that a government focussed on ‘missions’ sees that we, within the higher education sector, take an equally mission-driven approach to inclusivity.
Without this, we cannot hope to address the deep-seated barriers to higher education access, linked to socio-economic background, receipt of free school meals (FSM), and home postcode, that continue to define which Londoners benefit from educational opportunity. The same applies to the work of improving degree outcomes and career prospects. Currently, too few Londoners from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds progress from higher education into graduate-level employment, a phenomenon that the Mayor’s Fund for London refers to as ‘one world, two cities’. We as universities must make it our mission to ensure London and its opportunities are accessible to all.
Collaboration is key
There is, of course, only so much universities can do alone. Government is asking the sector to improve how it coordinates and collaborates to drive growth. New research published by London Higher, the network for universities and higher education colleges in the capital, shows that the same is needed if that growth is to be inclusive. The research finds that higher education already has a vital role in diversifying the talent pipeline to London’s key growth sectors, but that role is too concentrated around specific people and places in the capital. We need to develop a new, genuinely place-based approach to collaboration if we are to realise our full potential as engines of opportunity.
At Queen Mary, we are already working closely with partners across East London and beyond to do this. For example, in collaboration with Newham College and others, we run the London City Institute of Technology. Supported with funding from the Department of Education and the Greater London Authority, the Institute specialises in delivering higher technical education and apprenticeships, with a focus on subjects such as engineering and construction. In doing so, we provide students with the technical skills that employers require, supporting our graduates to secure high-quality jobs upon graduation.
Through our close ties with local communities, businesses and the NHS, many fostered through our civic activities, we possess a deep understanding of the skills employers are looking for in their workforce and, in turn, ensure our graduates leave with these skills.
An important turning point
We are at an important flexion point in higher education. In an era of mass higher education participation – with London the exemplar of this – our aim can no longer be simply to widen access. Instead, we must ensure an accessible higher education system is also one that delivers a more inclusive, better-skilled workforce for the future. This requires institutional commitment as well as new, innovative models of collaboration and strategic coordination. I, for one, am excited by this prospect and look forward to driving the changes needed.
Comments
Paul Wiltshire says:
It is not about inclusion as the HE sector would have us believe. It is about turning more young adults into their paying customers to satisfy their commercial imperative of profit and growth. It’s a funny kind on inclusion that involves getting a huge debt and no genuinely better career prospects that awaits hundred’s of thousands of graduates every year, particularly those with lower prior academic attainment.
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Jonathan Alltimes says:
In order to be admitted to a university, you must match the admission criteria. A-levels are still a major determinant of admission and performance at A-level is the major predictor of degree result. The current government is committed to tinkering with the system based on A-levels, which Universities UK supports. GCSEs are not the same as O Levels and there is a large difference in standards and content between GCSEs and A-levels. The small number of students admitted each year for foundation degrees and foundation years may have made admission easier, but these routes have not superceded A-levels as the major predictor of degree result. Do you understand now?
The government lacks a causal model of economic growth, as does the author of the blog, specifically for the function of higher education. We have had massive expansion of higher education since the 2003 white paper, whose rationale for expansion was a route out of poverty and closing the wage gaps with other nations. The policy has failed on its own terms, as it was only possible as an effect of economic growth in the private sector and not a cause. Higher education has expanded, but economic growth has been on a downward trend since the 2007-08 financial crash along with deindustrialization. As with the Wilson policy of expanding technical education in the 1960s and 1970s, the expansion arrived too late to have a major effect on deindustrialization and financialization: businesses employ who they want from an international labour market. How does each large company makes investment choices? There is no space in London for large manufacturing companies, so who employs the technically qualified? Higher education has been used as a substitute for the feeble training, industrial, and energy policies of the state since the 1940s.
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