The ‘Third Way’ to widening participation and maintaining quality in higher education: lessons from the United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper analyses higher education reform in relation to the ‘knowledge’ society and recent political frameworks developed by governments in response to sociopolitical and economic change. It argues that a wide range of countries have responded to forces associated with globalisation by adopting a ‘third way’ political approach, which lies mid-way between state collectivism and an unregulated market economy. On the one hand, this political approach promotes policies to support marketisation as the basis for a successful economy. On the other hand, the most corrosive effects of market forces are contained through state regulation and state support for disadvantaged groups. This ‘dual’ approach is reflected in government reform in higher education, particularly around issues of quality and participation. Presenting the reform of higher education in Britain as a case study, the paper outlines the important financial and other support measures devised by the New Labour government to distribute opportunities for study more evenly across society. The quality assurance measures, which have restructured the higher education terrain within a quasi-marketised framework, at the same time compel universities to compete against other universities for funding and status. This paper illustrates how the institutionalisation of the quality assurance mechanisms inhibits the workings of measures aimed at widening participation in the system as a whole. It concludes that the implementation of the ‘third way’ approach to higher education reform, which implements policy mechanisms to temper some of the consequences of the marketisation of higher education within a quasimarket framework, serves to penalise the very institutions which recruit students with the greatest social and educational need. Interaction of the measures for widening participation and quality assurance is therefore likely to lead to a higher education system that is heavily stratified along the lines of prior educational and social disadvantage.