Marketisation and post-1992 universities’ enactment of Widening Participation in the UK: ‘I do think universities need to be honest’

Drawing on two pieces of research, this paper focuses on the impact of marketisation on Widening Participation (WP) outreach activities amid indications of a narrowing of participation and in the wake of a tightening Higher Education (HE) funding environment. Within a field of competitive marketisation in HE, we problematise WP outreach interventions and the extent to which aims related to social justice are in tension with institutional responses to the HE market.
Across two studies in the West Midlands, interviews and focus groups were carried out with school and college students, staff delivering WP programmes, post-1992 undergraduate students and alumni from under-represented backgrounds. Exploring the data using Bourdieusian theory and complementary theoretical concepts, we theorise how within an increasingly marketised HE, WP interventions risk becoming for universities a self-interested ‘bums on seats’ exercise. While these activities may fulfil the meritocratic premise of increasing social mobility for individual students they may ultimately work against an altruistic ideal of social justice. This raises urgent questions about the purposes of HE and of post-1992 universities in particular in relation to social and economic inequality: necessitating authentic and honest relations with students about the HE market.