Fair Admission to Universities in England: Improving Policy and Practice Public Report Vikki Boliver and Mandy Powell Department of Sociology, Durham University January 2021 Contents 1. Background to the research .1 Theories of fair access and admission to higher education .2 Prior research on fair access and admission to higher education .1 Sampling of institutions for in-depth interviews .2 Sampling of Access and Participation Plans for 2020/21-2024/25.3 Ethical considerations and data archiving. Findings from interviews with Heads of Admission .1 The overarching goal of admissions .2 The role of prior academic attainment .3 The meaning of fair admissions .4 The socioeconomic diversity of the student body .5 The use of contextual data to inform admissions decisions. Findings from interviews with Admissions Selectors .1 The setting of standard academic entry requirements .2 The use of contextual data to assess applicant merit .3 The assessment of other applicant attributes .4 How the selection process unfolds.
Findings from Access and Participation Plans for 2020/21 to 2024/25 .1 The development of more ambitious widening access strategies .2 Towards a more structural understanding of prior attainment .3 The wider adoption of contextualised approaches to admissions .4 The improvement of support for students to realise their potential. Recommendations for fair admissions policy and practice. 111 Acknowledgements We would like to thank all those who participated in this research project for generously taking time to talk to us about their institution’s approach to undergraduate admissions. We are grateful to Dr Gill Wyness and Professor Sharon Gewirtz who kindly served as members of our advisory board, and to Cheryl Lloyd who oversaw the project on behalf of the Nuffield Foundation.
Thanks go to all three and to Dr Malcolm Parkes for providing valuable feedback on the project and final report. Thanks also go to Maddy Winnard and Adam Gemar for their capable assistance with various administrative tasks. Finally we would like to thank Nuffield Foundation for funding this research project and for supporting us in sharing its key findings. The Nuffield Foundation is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being.
It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare, and Justice. It also funds student programmes that provide opportunities for young people to develop skills in quantitative and scientific methods. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-funder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Ada Lovelace Institute. The Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation.
Report summary Introduction This report presents the findings of a Nuffield Foundation funded research project which set out to explore how universities in England offering courses with high academic entry requirements and a high demand for places conceptualise fair admissions in policy terms and operationalise fair admissions in practice. The report draws on three main data sources: 1) In-depth interviews with university Heads of Admission at 17 HEIs, both Old (pre-1992) and New (post-1992), located throughout England. These interviews were conducted during the 2017/18 academic year and explored the philosophical underpinnings and overarching goals of universities’ undergraduate admissions policies. 2) In-depth interviews with 51 admissions selectors at the same 17 HEIs, responsible for the day to day work of selecting applicants for a range of Science programmes and Arts programmes encompassing the Humanities, Social Sciences and Creative Arts.
These interviews, also conducted during the 2017/18 academic year, explored how institutional policies were enacted in practice with a particular focus on the ways in which selectors sought to differentiate between strong, weak and borderline applicants. 3) The Access and Participation Plans produced by 25 higher-tariff universities in England, including eleven of the institutions in our interview sample, which were submitted to the Office for Students (OfS) in 2019 and look ahead to the period 2020/21 to 2024/25. Our analysis of these data focused on the extent to which the undergraduate admissions policies and practices of universities with high academic entry requirements and a high demand for places aligned with each of two competing perspectives on fair access and admissions: Two competing perspectives on fair access and admissions i. The traditional ‘meritocratic equality of opportunity’ model, which holds that university places should go to the most highly qualified candidates irrespective of social background in accordance with the principle of procedural fairness interpreted as equal treatment.
An alternative ‘meritocratic equity of opportunity’ model, which holds that prospective students’ qualifications should be judged in light of the socioeconomic circumstances in which they were obtained in the pursuit of a greater degree of distributive fairness with regard to the allocation of university places. 1 Key findings from interviews with Heads of Admission The interviews with Heads of Admission (HoAs) showed that fair access and admission was framed largely with reference to the traditional meritocratic equality of opportunity paradigm. More specifically: These HEIs sought to admit the “best students”, defined as those most likely to succeed at degree level, regarded as being evidenced first and foremost by high levels of previous and predicted academic attainment in school examinations. Fairness was defined primarily with reference to the procedural justice principles of transparency and consistency, with the latter interpreted as requiring that all applicants should be treated the same.
These universities relied heavily on predicted A-level grades as indicators of ‘merit’ despite an awareness that A-level grades were often over-predicted. As a result, many HEIs ultimately admitted a substantial number of offer holders who failed to meet the academic entry requirements as “near-misses” during the August confirmation period. The emphasis on meritocratic equality of opportunity and procedural fairness interpreted as equal treatment was held in tension with a secondary commitment to the competing paradigm of equitable opportunity in the pursuit of distributive fairness. While all of the Old (pre-1992) universities in the sample had some form of contextualised admissions policy in recognition of the impact of socioeconomic inequalities on prior academic achievement, only half of these institutions routinely reduced academic entry requirements for disadvantaged applicants and instead gave additional consideration to these applicants where they were projected to meet standard academic entry requirements.
Where entry requirements were reduced, this was typically by just one or two grades. Most HoAs at both Old and New universities reported resistance by some academic staff members to reducing academic entry requirements for socioeconomically disadvantaged applicants on the grounds that doing so would inevitably set those students up to fail. Many HoAs also indicated that existing pedagogical practices and academic support structures were inadequate to the task of ensuring that contextually admitted students would be appropriately supported to fulfil their potential at the institution. In order to resolve the tension between interviewees’ adherence to the meritocratic equality of opportunity paradigm on the one hand, and their sympathy for competing arguments in favour of meritocratic equity of opportunity on the other, many HoAs were aware that an overhaul of support for contextually disadvantaged students would be needed to ensure that potential was reliably converted into achievement at university.
Key findings from interviews with admissions selectors The interviews with admissions selectors also showed that day-to-day admissions practices were informed principally by the meritocratic equality of opportunity model. More specifically: Selectors were seeking to identify applicants with most potential to succeed on the degree programme, evidenced first and foremost by high levels of prior and predicted attainment in line with typically high formal academic entry requirements at A-level, often coupled with similarly high informal expectations regarding attainment at GCSE. Many selectors were also looking, often secondarily, for evidence of applicants’ understanding of, motivation 2 towards, and suitability for the degree programme in question, as evidenced by personal statements, teacher references, and for some programmes portfolios of work and performance at interview. Most but not all selectors voiced a concern for meritocratic equity of opportunity and the associated goal of distributive fairness, and sought to evaluate applications with a mind to the impact of applicants’ socioeconomic circumstances on their opportunities and achievements to date.
Correspondingly, three-quarters of Science selectors and two-thirds of all Arts selectors at Old universities reported using contextual data to inform admissions decisions in some form or other, involving contextually disadvantaged applicants either being given extra consideration for admission to the programme subject to meeting standard entry requirements, or being admitted on the basis of a contextual offer involving a small reduction in academic entry requirements. Few selectors reported the existence of, or scope to develop, teaching and learning practices that could support contextually disadvantaged learners admitted with lower grades to bridge gaps in their knowledge and skills in order to successfully complete their programmes. This, coupled with the need to select a small number of applicants from a large and highly qualified applicant pool, meant that concerns for ensuring equitable opportunities in pursuit of distributive fairness tended to be outweighed by the dictates of the meritocratic equality of opportunity paradigm. Key findings from Access and Participation Plans The Access and Participation Plans (APPs) for 2020/21 to 2024/5 submitted in 2019 to the Office for Students by England’s 25 higher-tariff universities revealed that there had been a shift in institutional thinking on fair access and admissions since our interviews in 2017/18.
These universities had begun to move away from the traditional meritocratic equality of opportunity model towards the meritocratic equity of opportunity framework. More specifically: In response to the challenge laid down by the OfS to “rethink merit” in pursuit of the goal of equitable access within a generation, all providers had committed to much more ambitious widening access targets than ever before. Although some providers’ ambitions fell short of the OfS’s target of a 3:1 ratio of POLAR quintile 5 to quintile 1 entrants by 2024/25, this was justified by reference to concerns about the adequacy of POLAR as a means of identifying genuinely socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, especially in London. Many providers identified the dearth of highly qualified individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds as a continuing obstacle to widening participation at their institution.
However, the APPs indicated that there had been a shift in organisational thinking since we interviewed admissions personnel in 2017/18 away from interpreting lower attainment in terms of individual deficit and towards a more structural understanding of social inequalities in school attainment. Most providers also recognised that they had a contribution to make in closing the school attainment gap through varied forms of outreach work. All providers now reported some form of contextualised admissions policy, with many institutions having recently introduced a policy of reducing academic entry requirements for contextually disadvantaged applicants. Only four of the twenty-five higher-tariff universities stated that 3 they would continue to require that contextually disadvantaged applicants meet standard academic entry requirements.
Answering the OfS’s call to address inequalities in the continuation and attainment rates of admitted students, in addition to access issues, all providers acknowledged that they had a major role to play in ensuring the success of their students at degree level, especially those from socioeconomically disadvantaged and ethnic minority backgrounds. Correspondingly, all providers had committed to a range of initiatives designed to significantly improve the social and academic inclusion of students from disadvantaged and under-represented groups as a means of helping to ensure these students fulfil their potential at university. Recommendations for universities in relation to fair admissions Recognising the distance already travelled by higher-tariff universities in response to the OfS’s call to “rethink merit” in relation to admissions, and the OfS’s call to take on a greater level of responsibility for supporting students to succeed at degree level, the following recommendations set out how institutions can continue on the path towards meritocratic equity of opportunity and a correspondingly greater degree of distributive fairness with respect to the allocation of university places. Universities should aim to become progressively bolder in their use of contextual data on the socioeconomic circumstances of applicants to inform admissions decisions.