Business of Widening Participation

Colin McCaig is a Professor of Higher Education Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written extensively on widening participation policy in the context of marketised HE systems. He has 20 years' experience evaluating government-funded education programmes. Key recent publications include: The marketisation of English Higher Education: a policy analysis of a risk-based system, Emerald Publishing 2018; Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: A New Level Playing Field? (Co-edited with Bowl and Hughes, Palgrave 2018); Who are we Widening Participation for? BERA Research Intelligence No.143 2020; 'Higher Education, Widening Access and Market Failure: Towards a Dual Pricing Mechanism in England' Soc. Sci. 2019 (with Nic Lightfoot)Jon Rainford is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Associate in Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation at The Open University and as an independent widening participation consultant. He has over 12 years experience of working with marginalised groups in education and completed his PhD at Staffordshire University in 2019 which focused on widening participation policy and practice. He has written numerous publications on widening access and has a particular interest in the way technology can be embedded in a post-pandemic world.Ruth Squire is a researcher and former widening participation practitioner, with 15 years’ experience in delivering and evaluating widening participation activity in higher education and the third sector. She has published articles on practioner-led research, working-class student representation and on evaluation practices and she has a particular interest in practitioner-led evaluation and policy enactment. Her current research focuses on the role of the third sector in widening participation policy and on networks and expertise in policymaking.

• Chapter 1. Introduction: The case for a ‘business of widening participation’; Colin McCaig, Jon Rainford, and Ruth Squire Chapter 2. What drives widening participation policy in the English market?; Colin McCaig and Ruth Squire Chapter 3. Business as usual: the Enactment of Widening Participation policy 1992-2021; John Selby Chapter 4. Increasing and widening participation in the market: system differentiation at the institutional/sectoral level; Colin McCaig and Jon RainfordChapter 5. Operationalisation of widening participation in practice; Jon Rainford Chapter 6. Third sector organisations: multi-level enactors of widening participation; Ruth Squire Chapter 7. The Challenging Business of WP Evaluation; Julian Crockford Chapter 8. The Impact of Widening Participation on Further Education Settings in England; Peter Wolstencroft and Judith Darnell Chapter 9. New providers, new challenges; Graeme Slater Chapter 10. Conclusion: Evolving markets; where next for the business of WP?; Colin McCaig, Jon Rainford, and Ruth Squire

The contention of this lively collection of essays is that WP has become part of the ‘normal business’ of HE providers during the past 25 years. This is a lively account of the drivers of WP since the Dearing Review and the implementation of the social justice policies since that time. There is extensive use of policy documents from Government bodies such as HEFCE and OFFA as well as the academic literature, enabling a focus on the sometimes discordant relationship between Government, still the primary funder of undergraduate HE in England and autonomous, but dependent, universities. This highly readable book will be of great interest and value to policy makers, practitioners, researchers and historians of widening participation as well as to the many thousands of graduates who have benefitted from opportunity not afforded to those who went before.