Business as Usual: The Enactment of Widening Participation Policy 1992–2021

Abstract

This chapter traces the history of widening participation (WP) policy from 1992 to 2021, as seen largely from the point of view of a practitioner involved in policy enactment. After a brief overview of the history of widening access to higher education (HE), with its long tradition of outreach to adults, this chapter focuses on the significant shift to WP among young people in 1992. Following attempts to specify the problem and to provide the available evidence about it, a range of initiatives was introduced, designed to test appropriate interventions. This chapter identifies three broad strands of intervention – changes in the funding method, the requirement for institutions to produce WP strategies, and the development of collaborative programmes, all underpinned by a programme of research. Though the balance of these three strands has varied ever since, all have always been present. Underpinning all this intervention was a general assumption, again differentially emphasised, that widening access and participation to HE, though an ambition for the whole sector, would be an activity separate from and subordinate to the existing missions and ‘business’ of institutions and accepting the existing market hierarchy. From 2010 onwards, there was a sharper policy shift, which sought to make the existing market both a market in entry qualifications and a genuine financial market in tuition fees, with students seen as consumers, and a determination to ensure value for money for all and from all institutions. In spite of this, the three strands of intervention remained.

Citation

Selby, J. (2022), "Business as Usual: The Enactment of Widening Participation Policy 1992–2021", McCaig, C., Rainford, J. and Squire, R. (Ed.) The Business of Widening Participation: Policy, Practice and Culture, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-049-520221003