Have the changes introduced by the 2004 Higher Education Act made higher education admissions in England wider and fairer?
Have the changes introduced by the 2004 Higher Education Act made higher education admissions in England wider and fairer?
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2004 年《高等教育法案》的改革是否使英格兰的高等教育招生变得更广泛、更公平？
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
N. Harrison
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作者：
N. Harrison
至少从20世纪90年代初开始，“扩大参与”和“公平入学”就一直是英国高等教育中有争议的政策领域。它们是2003年白色文件-高等教育的未来-和随后的2004年《高等教育法》的关键方面，其既定目标是高等教育的覆盖面应该更广、更公平。特别是，人们对“顶尖大学”的录取情况相当关注，因为这些大学在社会和学术上都是排外的。该法使用的主要政策工具是实行可变学费、扩大学生赠款、酌情发放助学金和新的公平入学办公室。本文利用公开的统计数据来评估2004年法案实施的变化是否确实使从公立学校和学院以及社会经济地位较低的年轻人获得更广泛和更公平的英国高等教育。它的结论是，虽然有一些证据表明略有改善，但这些都集中在“顶级大学”之外，这些大学相对于该行业的其他大学有所下滑。本文最后讨论了为什么金融诱因似乎是一个有缺陷的和天真的方法来影响学生的需求的原因。
‘Widening participation’ and ‘fair access’ have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s. They were key facets of the 2003 White Paper – The Future of Higher Education – and the subsequent 2004 Higher Education Act, with stated objectives that the reach of higher education should be wider and fairer. In particular, there has been considerable concern about admissions to ‘top universities’, which have remained socially as well as academically exclusive. The principal policy tools used by the Act were the introduction of variable tuition fees, expanded student grants, discretionary bursaries and the new Office for Fair Access (OFFA). This paper draws on publicly available statistics to assess whether the changes implemented by the 2004 Act have indeed made access to English higher education wider and fairer in relation to young people progressing from state schools and colleges and from lower socio‐economic groups. It concludes that, while there is some evidence for modest improvements, these have been concentrated outside the ‘top universities’, which have seen slippage relative to the rest of the sector. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reasons why financial inducements appear to be a flawed and naive approach to influencing student demand.