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

在过去的二十年里，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高收费大学的比例仅为高等教育参与率高地区的五分之一。然而，由于几个交叉因素，这一情况可能在2020年发生变化。首先，挑战英格兰和苏格兰高等教育监管机构设定的新的扩大入学目标可能会促使收费较高的大学加倍努力吸引来自社会经济弱势背景的申请人，并向这些申请人提供比以往更多的初步录取机会，包括降低弱势申请人入学要求的相关录取。第二，为部分抵销因新型冠状病毒疫情持续而预期学费较高的国际学生人数减少的影响，所有英国大学获准于二零二零年多收5%的英国本科生，让学费较高的大学较以往有更大空间录取更多来自社会经济弱势群体的申请人。第三，政府对唯一使用算法计算学生A级成绩的做法进行了180度大转弯，并决定在教师的预测高于算法估计的情况下也尊重教师的预测，很可能大大增加了社会经济上处于不利地位的大学申请者的比例，他们继续满足进入更高级别大学的学术入学要求，因此，他们最初的录取通知书得到了确认，或者能够在8月的确认期内通过UCAS调整或结算获得录取通知书。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，可能促使一些录取通知书持有者推迟或拒绝录取，尽管目前尚不清楚这在社会经济背景不利的人中是否更常见。拟议的研究旨在研究这些因素对2020年扩大进入高关税大学的程度的影响，并探讨在高度垂直差异化的英国大学部门内，扩大进入高关税大学的机会对中等关税和低关税机构的影响。为此，该项目将分析与国家学生数据库（NPD）相关联的大学和学院招生服务（UCAS）提供的数据，以检查2019-2020年招生周期期间提交的大学申请的轨迹，并与前两个招生周期期间提交的申请进行系统比较。该分析将探讨录取过程的每个连续阶段，包括（a）初始申请，（B）大学名额的初始报价，（c）初始报价的接受，（d）确认的名额报价，（e）确认报价的接受，以及（f）在8月确认期间通过UCAS调整和结算的后期保障。我们的分析将研究在2019-2020年入学周期的每个阶段申请高关税大学的申请人的社会经济组成，并与前两个周期中具有相同社会背景和成就特征的申请人进行系统比较。我们的分析还将利用社交网络分析技术来研究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，并且可能在2020年变得更加如此。

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.