‘Widening Access’ to higher education: the reproduction of university hierarchies through policy enactment

Patterns of participation in higher education (HE) in the UK, as elsewhere, have been marked by social inequalities for decades. UK Governments have responded with a plethora of policies and agendas aimed at addressing this broad social issue. However, little is known about how higher education institutions (HEIs) interpret and ‘enact’ these policies in relation to institution-specific contexts. Drawing on concepts from policy sociology this paper examines how HEIs in one nation state, Wales, enact its Government’s policy on ‘widening access’ to higher education. Interviews with a range of ‘policy actors’ along with analyses of institutional ‘widening access’ policy documents, reveal divergences between HEIs in how this policy agenda is interpreted and delivered. These differences reflect institution-specific contexts – not least their internal politics and assumptions about the type of students they admit, but also their interests and priorities in relation to their positions within a global, marketised, HE system. The implications of this for the reproduction of university hierarchies in the UK, as well as social inequalities more generally are brought to the fore. ‘Widening Access’ to higher education policy in Wales ‘Widening access’ has been a central agenda within higher education (HE) policy in recent decades in the UK as elsewhere (Bowes et al. 2013; Croxford et al. 2014). In the UK, this agenda has been predicated on the notion that some social groups (defined, for example, in terms of gender, ethnic background or ‘less advantaged’ social and economic circumstances) have been under-represented in HE and that this under-representation is, in some sense, ‘unfair’ (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) 2011; Milburn 2012; Welsh Assembly Government 2009). Indeed, whilst patterns of participation in HE have increased substantially over the past half century in the UK, young people from the most socially disadvantaged backgrounds, and from Black and Asian ethnic groups remain significantly less likely to secure entry to HE, and to high ranking higher education institutions (HEI) in particular (Boliver 2013; Chowdry et al. 2013). As such, the implied notion of ‘fair access’ has been extended to embrace a concern over patterns of entry to different types of