Box of delight

This blog was contributed by Jenny Shaw, Higher External Education Engagement Director at Unite Students.

So much of student life is shaped by the experience of being in student accommodation. Living in a student community, making new friends, meeting people from different backgrounds, managing day-to-day life independently are all learning experiences in their own right. Moreover, the sense of belonging, support and safety within that community of peers provides a foundation that can increase the ability to study well and thrive at university.

This blog was kindly contributed by Professor Randall Whittaker, Pro-Vice Chancellor Academic and Leeds Arts University. You can find Randall on Twitter @RandalWhittaker.

On Wednesday 21 April HEPI hosted the third webinar in a series with Advance HE on ‘How do we ensure equality in higher education in a pandemic?’. You can watch the recording here.

Over the years there have been numerous calls for action to abandon the divisive BAME term which have predictably not been heeded. I have previously argued that the homogenous term BAME is not only lazy but also problematic. Who exactly are you referring to when you use it? BAME has no nuance and the way it is being used impacts the lives of people of colour negatively; ‘BAME’ is being use to misrepresent the experience of Black and brown people and to mask inaction.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report published at the end of March this year, recommends that the term should be disaggregated. Although I support this recommendation it is concerning that in other parts of the report the Commission use disaggregation to explain differential outcomes between Black communities:

Remember the “good ol’ days?” How often did you walk down a hallway of your academic unit and pass a student, faculty or staff member, or administrator and have a short conversation about the new course you were teaching, asked for advice about applying to graduate school, talked about the upcoming faculty-staff-student barbeque, or discussed a pending sporting event between rivals? We have all taken part in these chit-chats, whether distracting or welcoming. Do you remember having these interactions with colleagues and students on our campuses? You may not, as these chit-chats often occurred before the pandemic forced most of us to work from home.

As we engage in discourse that acknowledges the past and looks to the future, Black History Month offers a timely reminder of the interventions needed across higher education to tackle the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student attainment gap. In the HEPI report The white elephant in the room, the authors recommend that higher education institutions participate in the Race Equality Charter, do groundwork to facilitate conversations about race and avoid vague actions that are unlikely to effect change. These are excellent ideas for reducing racial inequalities in higher education, but another gap between Black and White graduates persists after they leave the institutions – an outcomes gap. As the first release of HESA’s Graduate Outcomes Survey has shown, fifteen months after graduating from university UK-domiciled graduates from BAME backgrounds are 8% less likely to be in full-time graduate employment than their White peers (54% versus 62%) and BAME graduates were also more likely to be unemployed than White graduates.

The Office for Students Access and Participation data, released on 29 March, exists to support registered providers in developing an access and participation plan for submission in May.

But for such a potentially explosive release, response has been muted. We are offered a tantalising glimpse of the student experience for a range of disadvantaged groups, and the chance to identify the providers where admirable progress is being made along with those where the progress is yet to come. If higher education is indeed, as Justine Greening suggests, all about social mobility we need this data more than ever. But the design of the data presentation means that few have been able to see the full scope of what we now know about the sector.

A new report investigating the pay differences between ethnic minority staff and their white counterparts has been published by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA).

Inspired by the interest shown in gender pay gap reporting and the prospect of ethnicity pay gap reporting, the key findings include clear evidence that pay ‘penalties’ for ethnic minorities are significant, with black men and black women earning the least on average relative to white men. The research finds that the pay penalty experienced by ethnic minority women in the sector is much more likely to be due to factors associated with their ethnicity than their gender.

As the landscape of higher education becomes more and more competitive, we are encouraged to “create more engagement” with our alumni. But what does that mean, exactly? Call me a curmudgeon, but I hate the word engagement.

The subject of decolonising the curriculum is once again back in the headlines, following recent comments by the Universities Minister. Advocates of decolonising the curriculum have objected strongly, arguing that Ministers are seeking to dictate the content of courses.

This is wide of the mark. On the one hand, decolonising the curriculum activists claim merely to be inviting a conversation about diversifying the reading lists and material on university courses. On the other hand, activists are working with often compliant university leadership teams to force through radical changes to UK higher education. Since these changes are both illiberal and authoritarian, the Government’s announcements should be seen for what they are: a defence of key academic values, including the primacy of evidence-led research, judgmental rationalism and academic freedom.

This blog was kindly contributed by Kirstie-Anne Woodman, a recent International Relations graduate from the University of Birmingham. Kirstie-Anne is currently interning at a diversity and inclusion consultancy agency, Worth of Mouth Services.You can find Kirstie-Anne on LinkedIn.

It took me a long time to find a dissertation topic which invigorated me and I felt a true passion for. Then, by chance, I came across Nicola Rollock’s ‘Staying Power’ paper, a report on the career experiences of Black female professors in the UK. While reading, it hit me, I had never had, or even seen a Black professor at my university – let alone a Black female professor. This led me to think of all of my university experiences which had differed to those of my peers due to my Blackness. I read reports regarding the Black attainment gap, the Black drop-out rate and the need to decolonise curriculums. For the first time, feelings of otherness that I had felt throughout my entire university journey, were explained and quantified in academic terms. And so I wrote ‘Black Academic, White Space: The Insidious Legacy of Institutional Racism at Top-tier UK Universities’.

At over 200 pages and 50 recommendations, the Augar report does not disappoint as a meaty piece of policy work. It will take us some time to fully digest its many implications, the job of which we’ve started work on already and will involve the ideas and analysis of countless experts from inside and outside universities. I write this article having read it all the way through once, not having had sight of much of the underlying research or funding datasets. This is my hot take in which I am only able to cover a precious few specific aspects of the report – there’s a great deal more analysis to follow.

I write about mental health on the internet. I do this writing to help destigmatize mental illness and also to help those who are like me live better lives by seeing where I mess up. Typically, for this magazine, I write about activism in higher education. This month might seem like a departure from that topic—but it really isn't. This column is about how to push back against the gendered expectations that women do more work to succeed in similar ways as our male colleagues; that women never say “no” to things, lest we never get asked again; and the fear that if we don't answer an email right away, we'll be perceived as rude or disorganized.