Socioeconomic inequalities of access to higher-tariff UK universities in 2020

2020 年进入高学费英国大学的社会经济不平等

• 批准号: ES/V01644X/1
• 负责人: Vikki Boliver
• 金额: $ 25.92万
• 依托单位: Durham University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV01644X%2F1
• 关键词: Socioeconomic; inequalities; access; higher; tariff

The UK's most academically selective universities have made slow progress on closing the socioeconomic gap in access over the course of the past two decades. Currently, young people from areas with the lowest rates of participation in higher education enter higher-tariff universities at just one-fifth the rate of those from high HE participation areas. However, this picture may have changed in 2020 as a result of several intersecting factors. First, challenging new widening access targets set by the higher education regulators for England and Scotland are likely to have prompted higher-tariff universities to redouble their efforts to attract applicants from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, and to make more initial offers of places to these applicants than ever before, including contextual offers involving a reduction in academic entry requirements for disadvantaged applicants. Second, as a means of partially offsetting an anticipated decline in the number of higher-fee-paying international students due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, all UK universities were permitted to admit 5% more UK-based undergraduates entrants in 2020, giving higher-tariff universities greater scope to admit more applicants from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups than in the past. Third, the government's u-turn on the sole use of an algorithm to calculate students' A-level grades, and decision to also honour teachers' predictions where these were higher than estimated by the algorithm, is likely to have significantly increased the proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged university applicants who went on to meet the academic entry requirements for admission to a higher-tariff university and therefore had their initial offers of a place confirmed, or were able to gain an offer through UCAS Adjustment or Clearing during the August confirmation period. Finally, ongoing uncertainties arising from the coronavirus pandemic, including whether university teaching in 2020 would be delivered in person or online, and the risk of further local or national lockdowns, are likely to have prompted some offer holders to defer or decline places, although it is unclear whether this was more or less common among those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. The proposed study sets out to examine the impact of these factors on the extent of widening access to higher-tariff universities in 2020, and to explore the implications of any widening of access to higher-tariff universities on medium-tariff and lower-tariff institutions within what is a highly vertical differentiated UK university sector. To do so, the project will analyse data provided by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD) to examine the trajectories of university applications made during the 2019-2020 admissions cycle, compared systematically with applications submitted during the two preceding admissions cycles. The analysis will explore each sequential phase of the admissions process including (a) initial applications, (b) initial offers of university places, (c) acceptances of initial offers, (d) confirmed offers of places, (e) acceptances of confirmed offers, and (f) the late-stage securing of places through UCAS Adjustment and Clearing during the August confirmation period. Our analysis will examine the socioeconomic composition of applicants to higher-tariff universities at each of these stages of the 2019-2020 admissions cycle, compared systematically to applicants with the same social background and attainment characteristics in the two preceding cycles. Our analysis will also make use of social network analysis techniques to examine corresponding changes to the wider national system of UK universities, which is already highly stratified with respect to institutional prestige, and may have become even more so in 2020.

在过去20年里，英国最具学术选择性的大学在缩小社会经济差距方面进展缓慢。目前，来自高等教育参与率最低地区的年轻人进入关税较高的大学的比率仅为高等教育参与率高地区的五分之一。然而，由于几个相互交错的因素，这种情况可能在2020年发生了变化。首先，高等教育监管机构为英格兰和苏格兰设定的新的扩招目标具有挑战性，这可能会促使关税更高的大学加倍努力，吸引来自社会经济不利背景的申请者，并向这些申请者提供比以往任何时候都更多的初始名额，包括根据背景提供的机会，包括降低对弱势申请者的学术入学要求。其次，作为部分抵消由于冠状病毒大流行而导致的高学费国际学生数量预期下降的手段，所有英国大学获准在2020年多录取5%的英国本科生入学，给予关税更高的大学比过去更大的空间来招收更多来自社会经济弱势群体的申请者。第三，政府决定只使用一种算法来计算学生的A-Level成绩，并决定在老师的预测高于算法估计的情况下，也承认这些预测，这可能会显著增加社会经济条件较差的大学申请者的比例，这些人继续满足更高关税大学的学术入学要求，因此他们最初的录取条件得到了确认，或者能够在8月份的确认期内通过UCAS调整或清算获得录取机会。最后，冠状病毒大流行带来的持续不确定性，包括2020年的大学教学是亲自授课还是在线授课，以及地方或国家进一步封锁的风险，可能促使一些获得录取机会的人推迟或拒绝录取名额，尽管尚不清楚这种情况在社会经济不利背景的人中是更常见还是更不常见。这项拟议的研究旨在研究这些因素对2020年扩大进入更高关税大学的程度的影响，并探索任何扩大进入更高关税大学的机会对高度垂直分化的英国大学部门内的中等关税和较低关税机构的影响。为此，该项目将分析大学和学院招生局(UCAS)提供的与国家学生数据库(NPD)相连的数据，以系统地对照前两个招生周期提交的申请，审查2019-2020年招生周期内大学申请的轨迹。分析将探讨招生程序的每个顺序阶段，包括：(A)最初的申请，(B)最初的大学录取，(C)接受最初的录取，(D)确认的录取，(E)接受确认的录取，以及(F)在8月份确认期内通过UCAS调整和结算获得学位的后期阶段。我们的分析将考察2019-2020年招生周期每个阶段申请关税较高大学的社会经济构成，并与前两个周期具有相同社会背景和成就特征的申请者进行系统比较。我们的分析还将利用社交网络分析技术来检验英国大学更广泛的国家体系的相应变化，该体系在机构声望方面已经高度分层，并可能在2020年变得更加严重。