Taking Identities Into Account in Access Policies

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Taking Identities Into Account in Access
Policies

• International trends and local innovations
• Gaële Goastellec, University of Lausanne,
  Switzerland
• OECD Conference, 12/2008

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Introduction

• NCS research 2005-2006
• Collaborative research issue of access and
  equity policies in its various facets
• Look at 9 HE systems (UK, SA, the US, France,
  Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ireland, Indonesia, Israel)
• Sub-topic Equity through two tracers
• Access norms
• Funding

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• Aim and structure of this presentation
• Identifying historical global trends in access
  policies
• Presenting some local innovations
• The issue of the organization of access to higher
  education is non dissociable from individual
  identities and collective belongings

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Common global patterns regarding access 3 main
principles

• - Inherited Merit characterizes the 1st period
  of HE systems. Access is the exclusivity of
  academically selected students within the
  dominant group of the society (being a male,
  coming from the upper class and from an urban
  area)
• Equality of rights Access formal barriers
  regarding genders and later ethno-racial or
  social groups are eliminated. Open access to all
  is supposed to guarantee equal access between
  individuals independently of their belongings.
• Equity EoP/ widening access to the HE sector as
  a whole and/or within the most selective
  institutions in order to build up a student body
  more representative of the social diversity.
  Implicates to take identities into account to
  warrant equality between the various groups.

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An emerging fair definition of merit?

• Merit becomes the measurement of the distance
  between the academic level reached by students
  and the diverse handicaps they had to face
  (conditions of schooling, social,
  cultural,geographic, ethno-racial background,
  disabilities)
• This measurement is based on various indicators
  depending on national traditions

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National traditions

• Each society has one legitimated category of
  reading social diversity
• Examples
• - professional categories in France
• - ethno-racial categories in the US SA

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moving toward complexity

• From racial to social identities
• From social to racial identities
• And more broadly, a complexification of the
  identities taken into account to measure
  inequalities.
• EoO norm is translated into admission processes
  (Affirmative Action holistic admission
  processes) and increasingly implemented through
  funding instruments

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2. Innovating admission processes

• Bronx CC
• attempt to improve the level of registration for
  black males.
• organizes a second start of the academic year for
  those who walk over the counter after the first
  start (bridging classes, tutoring and specific
  calendar for the 1st semester to overcome their
  lateness)

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• University of Johannesburg
• 25 of the students disadvantaged students
  recruited through a second path of admission
  (specific test)
• All are oriented towards bridging classes
  centralized by a Center for teaching and learning
  (foundation year)
• One year in or out if at the end of the first
  years, academic results insufficient to follow
  the general program out

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• CUNY Honor Colleges
• High end programs for gifted students, many of
  whom come from under-represented groups and are
  first generation students.
• Students are selected for their academic results
  and provided with generous financial support and
  access to NY cultural activities.

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• SciencesPo Paris
• Adopted in 2000 a specific admission process for
  students coming from geographically identified
  disadvantaged high schools (ZEP)
• Reorganized tuition fees and funding to make high
  family income students pay the price of their
  studies and low income students benefit from all
  inclusive fellowships.
• Aim to socially diversify the student body

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Learning from innovations

• Diversity of the procedures implemented. Focus on
  specific publics (small scale) and provide
  academic, economic and cultural support.
• Underlines a trend toward a more holistic taking
  into account of individuals importance to adapt
  practices to local specificities and to follow
  admission processes aimed at taking under
  represented groups into account.

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3. Innovations in funding Two categories of
funding instruments

• students funding classical cost-sharing
  rationale (Johnstone 1986, 2002, 2006)
• Tuition fees (direct or repayable) global trend
  to increase their weight
• Grants (need-based/merit-based) loans principle
  of a loan framework with later repayment under
  question in a larger number of HE systems
• Institutions funding
• Allocation mechanisms taking into account
  students access dimensions
• number of students
• the characteristics of entering and graduating
  students (social belonging)
• Time to graduation

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Funding incentives toward widening access a new
dimension of cost-sharing?

• Indexing part of institutional funding on the
  characteristics of the students registering
  or/and the students graduatingHas for effect to
  partly fund institutions on their ability to
  favor social mobility
• - Ireland new funding model 2006-2008
  Integrates State premium for identified target
  groups of students
• - Ethiopia 2003 Higher Education
  proclamation funding formula taking into account
  the type of program or course enrolment of
  females and disadvantaged students.
• - SA funding formula aimed at taking entering
  and graduating students into account as well as
  the proportion of disadvantaged students.

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3. Some conclusions

• The funding of access can be used by public
  authorities as an instrument to steer, and, in
  particular, to implement the Equality of
  Opportunities norm.
• The equity norm is helpful as an indicator of
  institutions efficiency especially when it comes
  to access quality
• The diversity of identities is increasingly taken
  into account in innovating institutions admission
  processes and national funding frameworks. They
  underline the necessity of a diverse and of
  always more plural models of taking inequalities
  into account.

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• Thank You
• Gaele.Goastellec_at_unil.ch