Framing student equity in higher education: National and global policy contexts of a fair chance for all

Abstract

This chapter provides a survey of changing national and global higher education policy contexts over the past three decades, specifically from the perspective of the publication of the A Fair Chance for All discussion paper in 1990. We show how A Fair Chance for All emerged from a specifically Australian conjunction of social justice commitments to ‘a fair go’ and the emergence of neo-liberalism. In this respect, A Fair Chance for All constitutes an early Australian exemplar of neo-social governance, and its emphasis on the introduction of targets and performance measures foreshadowed the rise of policy as numbers in education. A Fair Chance for All also prefigured a shift in student equity policy in higher education to focus on aspirations, which sought to activate people in relation to their educational potential, and it enshrined a conception of equity as fairness that would come to shape education policies globally in the decades that followed its publication.