Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education

A New Level Playing Field?

Marion Bowl, Colin McCaig, Jonathan Hughes, Marion Bowl, Colin McCaig, Jonathan Hughes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319783130
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This edited collection demonstrates how discourses and practices associated with marketisation, differentiation and equality are manifested in UK higher education today. Uniting leading scholars in higher education and equality in England, the contributors and editors expose the contradictions arising from the tension between aims for increased equality and an increasingly marketised higher education. As the authors seek to reveal both the intended and unintended consequences of the intensified marketisation of the sector, they critically examine the implications of these changes. In doing so, they reveal the ways in which institutional policy and discourse are involved in masking the contradictions between an educational marketplace and education as a vehicle for advancing equality and social justice. This pioneering volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of higher education in England, education policy and the marketisation of higher education, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

© The Author(s) 2018

Marion Bowl, Colin McCaig and Jonathan Hughes (eds.)Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher EducationPalgrave Studies in Excellence and Equity in Global Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78313-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Diversity and Differentiation, Equity and Equality in a Marketised Higher Education System

Marion Bowl¹

(1)

School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Marion Bowl

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that higher education across much of the capitalist world has become increasingly marketised (Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Ball 1998; Canaan and Shumar 2008; Brown 2011; Brown and Carasso 2013; Marginson 2013; McGettigan 2013). Although the existence of market-like activities in universities has been longstanding, what has brought the issue of marketisation to the fore in current debates around higher education is the global reach of the assumptions, language, policies and practices of the market and the extent to which they have impinged upon almost every aspect of universities’ purpose and functioning. Since the 1970s, higher education has been influenced and re-shaped by neoliberalism, which advocates the application of market principles to areas which were formerly regarded as being in the public domain. And while there are differences in view over the extent to which higher education operates as a ‘pure’ market or a ‘quasi-market’ (Bartlett and Le Grand 1993; Agasisti and Catalano 2006), or whether it simply displays ‘market-like’ features, the reality of marketisation is beyond dispute, and its impact on higher education institutions (HEIs), their staff and students—and the relationships between them—has been profound.

The UK government’s 2016 policy pronouncements on higher education (DBIS 2016), published as we met together to begin the process of producing this book, highlight a question at the heart of our discussion—is it possible (beyond the realms of political rhetoric) to reconcile policies which seek to bring ‘free market principles’ to bear on the higher education sector, with a system which is open to all who wish to and have the ability to take advantage of it?

We have gone from a higher education system that serves only a narrow band of people, to a broader more diverse and more open system that is closer than ever to fulfilling Lord Robbins’ guiding principle that higher education should be available to all who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue it. (DBIS 2016: 7)

Competition between providers in any market incentivises them to raise their game, offering consumers a greater choice of more innovative and better quality products and services at lower costs. Higher Education is no exception . (DBIS 2016: 8)

One manifestation of marketisation, apparent at both global and local levels, is the dominance of global and national rankings (or league tables) in driving institutional efforts to gain competitive advantage. A second manifestation has been the encouragement given by some governments to new providers —including private providers—to enter the higher education field in order to stimulate competition. Institutional differentiation and diversity have therefore become key terms in academic and policy discourses, used to signify ‘choice’ in a marketised higher education system. However, these terms are rarely defined in the policy statements in which they are so liberally employed. For example, there is frequently a lack of clarity as to whether differentiation indicates functional differences in range and types of provision (horizontal differentiation) or whether it represents status differences between institutional types or modes of study (vertical differentiation). While the former suggests greater ‘consumer choice’, the latter suggests differences in esteem which, from an equality perspective, would not be desirable. And—as the above-quoted extracts from a recent UK Government White Paper on English higher education (DBIS 2016) suggest—although market competition is at the forefront, notions of ‘fair access’ still persist in the policy rhetoric. Indeed it would be difficult to envisage a government policy position which (on paper at least) did not advocate that higher education should be available to as wide a section of the population as could benefit from it; governments both to the left and right of the spectrum, whatever their enthusiasm for education markets, profess active support for higher education’s role as a fair distributor of educational and life chances. In England, from the Robbins Report of the 1960s to the 2016 White Paper on Higher Education, the mantra has been that ‘higher education should be available to all who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue it’ (DBIS 2016: 7). However , the devil is in the detail—and also in the discourse. The language of ‘opportunity’ and ‘choice’, ‘differentiation’ and ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’, ‘fairness’ and ‘social mobility’ are skilfully employed by those who formulate policy and those who enact it, in order to maintain the idea that in a marketised system it is still possible to make claims for higher education as an equalising force.

In this book, we examine how marketisation is being utilised as a vehicle for bringing about significant changes in the English higher education sector. We examine critically the implications of these changes and whether—and how—notions of equality can be reconciled with the promotion of an educational market. Questions which this book contributes to answering are:

• What features of marketisation are most evident in higher education?
• How does institutional differentiation impact on HEIs, staff and students?
• By what means are policies, practices and discourses of marketisation and differentiation in higher education reconciled with those of equality of opportunity?

While we explore marketisation as a global phenomenon in the opening chapters of this book, our primary focus is on England, which provides a case study of a system which, in recent years, has gone further than most in the direction of marketisation. Our intention is to examine the above questions in detail, in order to assess the particular forms which marketised higher education may take in practice, with the aim of illuminating some of the key assumptions at play and the complications and contradictions of policies which espouse ‘fairness’ in a marketised system. In this introductory chapter, we outline some of the common manifestations of marketisation in contemporary higher education and discuss the extent to which the higher education market is a reality or a metaphor for a set of ideologically driven policies and processes—widely striven for but never achieved. We then explain the relationships between marketisation and sector differentiation and the extent to which calls for increased differentiation and diversity represent increased ‘consumer choice’, or whether they signal a scramble for status in which poorer institutions and students are the losers, and claims for equality or fairness are compromised.

A Higher Education Market?

To understand the processes and practices of marketisation within higher education, it is necessary first to examine how the term is used in the sector and what are the implications for its use. In general terms, a market may be described as the means by which sellers transact with buyers, exchanging goods or services for an agreed price. Roger Brown defines it thus:

a means o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Diversity and Differentiation, Equity and Equality in a Marketised Higher Education System
• 2. International Policies for Higher Education and Their National Variants: Reconciling Equality and Marketisation in National Policy Texts
• 3. English Higher Education: Widening Participation and the Historical Context for System Differentiation
• 4. System Differentiation in England: The Imposition of Supply and Demand
• 5. Can ‘Alternative Providers’ Really Improve Equality of Opportunity for Students Entering Higher Education?
• 6. Institutional Diversification and Student Diversity in English Higher Education
• 7. Marketisation, Institutional Stratification and Differentiated Pedagogic Approaches
• 8. Measurement Imperatives and Their Impact: Academic Staff Narratives on Riding the Metric Tide
• 9. Conceptualising Equality, Equity and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: Fractures and Fault Lines in the Neoliberal Imaginary
• Back Matter