Reimagining student equity and aspiration in a global higher education field

Abstract

Widening participation in higher education (HE) is now a key ambition of government policy in many countries around the globe. For most OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations, expanding HE provision is the policy instrument for producing more knowledge workers, needed to gain a competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy, particularly in the wake of losing industrial economic dominance to China, India and other rapidly developing nations (Spence, 2011: xv). In addition, the World Bank and other transnational politico-economic organizations now tie their financial support for developing nations (e.g. in Africa and Asia) to the expansion of HE (Molla & Gale, in press), as a way of achieving poverty reduction and economic growth (World Bank, 2002). For nations with a social inclusion agenda, HE expansion is also justified in terms of increasing the participation of traditionally under-represented groups, although achieving expansion in OECD nations is itself increasingly reliant on being more socially inclusive. Universal participation (Trow, 1974; 2006) has become the new social imaginary for HE (Taylor, 2002; Gale & Hodge, in press), similar in scope and significance to the introduction of compulsory schooling in the mid 1800s.