Gypsy students's voices about their experience in the University

Abstract

The social dimension of higher education is a fundamental key in the process of building the European Higher Education Area. This dimension implies the need to improve the access of some underrepresented groups currently in higher education, among which are gypsies. In Spain, around 35% of the population has higher education while this percentage is only 3% among gypsy people. Universities must implement measures that improve both the access and the permanence of these groups in higher education. A fundamental element in the approach of these policies is the participation in their design of people belonging to these groups. We gather in this work the vision of the gypsy students of the University of Cádiz about their experience in the University and the proposals they make to improve the attention to this group. We include quantitative data collected through an online questionnaire and their voices, collected through 10 interviews. The results suggest a reduced presence of gypsy students in the university, with these students being mainly females pursuing social and human science degrees. Approximately half of them have felt discriminated against in the university because they are gypsies, either because of comments from professors and classmates or because of the contents of the subjects. They propose to improve the visibility of this group in the university, to train the teaching staff, to provide economic aid for this group and to intervene institutionally in cases of discrimination.