Charting equity: drawing the global higher education access map
- Graeme Atherton, National Education Opportunities Network
- Geoff Whitty, University of Newcastle, Australia, and UCL Institute of Education
Participation in higher education is expanding steadily – there will be half a billion HE students by 2030. But who are these students? And who is missing out?
A new report produced by Pearson Plc and the University of Newcastle, Charting equity in higher education: drawing the global access map, looks at the evidence on who accesses HE across the globe and shows that inequalities in participation are pervasive, spanning countries regardless of size or wealth.
The report gathers data covering 90 per cent of the countries in the world and includes in-depth case studies of the US, UK, Australia, India, South Africa and Colombia. It argues that we can show conclusively that inequality in access to HE is a genuinely global challenge. But at the same time there are political, cultural and financial barriers to overcome in order to really understand how HE participation by social background differs across the world.
The report recommends the adoption of a Global Equity Data Charter – a series of actions to help universities and governments understand and address inequalities in who benefits from HE. At this seminar Dr Graeme Atherton and Professor Geoff Whitty, the lead authors of the report, will outline its main findings and the opportunities for collaboration across institutions and countries that the data charter offers.
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Dr Graeme Atherton is an international researcher and leader in the field of access and equity in higher education. He founded and leads the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON), the professional organisation for access to HE in England. He has produced over 120 conference papers and publications in this field and holds Visiting Professorships at London Metropolitan University, Amity Business School and Sunway University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His latest book, Access to higher education: understanding global inequalities, is published by Palgrave MacMillan.
Professor Geoff Whitty CBE is the Co-Director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is a world-renowned scholar and institutional leader who has published widely in the sociology of education and education policy studies. He holds a Global Innovation Chair for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia and a Research Professorship in Education at Bath Spa University, UK. He was the Director of the Institute of Education, University of London, UK from 2000-2010. His latest book, Research and policy in education: evidence, ideology and impact, was published by UCL IOE Press in 2016.