Widening participation aims and outcomes: Examining higher education prospects for four non-traditional students

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Traditional Students ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Non Traditional Students

Tactics and strategies to survive ‘student engagement’, or joining the Soil Society and other stories

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-130
Author(s):  
Jacqui Close
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Engagement ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Student Experience ◽  
Traditional Students ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
University Life ◽  
Non Traditional Students

In the U.K., ‘student engagement’, and the related ‘student experience’, are increasingly measured, interpreted and then marketed to students as a basis on which to choose the ‘best’ place for their higher education. This article summarises and reflects on presentations from five panel members at a conference on their experience of university life after that choice had been made. The panel included non-traditional students who embodied some of the characteristics (such as age, social class and ethnicity) that have become performance indicators in relation to widening participation and engagement in higher education. This article captures how students themselves understand a concept that occupies such a prominent, if contested, position in contemporary higher education. This analysis invites one to take a closer look at the identity work necessary for students to thrive (and for some just to survive) at university against a backdrop that tends to homogenise both ‘experience’ and ‘student’.

scholarly journals Individualization in the widening participation debate

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Baker ◽  
B. Brown ◽  
J A Fazey
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Traditional Students ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Non Traditional Students ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
As If

We provide an analysis of some recent widening participation literature concerning the barriers preventing non-traditional students accessing higher education. This literature criticizes higher education institutions and staff, opening up the academics' attitudes and skills to inquiry. We follow the genesis of four themes in the literature and these are visited in turn to provide substantive arguments. Students' accounts of their experiences are taken as if they were a systematic analysis of higher education institutions and result in an individualistic analysis of the problems related to access and progression. Beck described such assumptions and devices as individualization. We question the use of such pervasive individualism in the widening participation debate.

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