Abstract
This article describes ways in which the equity agenda, as outlined in the Bradley Review of Higher Education (Bradley et al., 2008), is translated into action in one Australian university. Drawing on the conceptual work of Ahmed (2012) to elaborate institutional life, we investigate the effects of the widening participation policy. Ahmed (2012) provokes us to consider institutional commitment as a non-performative in order to examine the association between names and effects as central to institutional cultures. This is achieved through a focus not only on what documents circulating within institutions say but what they do from the perspective of those working with them. The paper draws on three statements of commitment made by various Australian universities in the form of publicly available mission statements and strategic plans to explore how universities value, construct and authenticate their role in widening participation. It then proceeds by supplementing these texts with qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews with academic and professional staff in one Australian university to examine how such statements of commitment inform us of the extent to which they are practised or utilised as demonstrations of action in and of themselves. Drawing on Rizvi and Lingard’s (2011) work on social equity in Australian higher education, we argue that statements of commitment to equity and widening participation from universities in the current neoliberal policy assemblage can function to mask the ways in which universities continue to redefine educational values in terms of economics (Rizvi and Lingard, 2011).
Introduction
Driven by economic and social justice imperatives, raising the participation in higher education of people from disadvantaged backgrounds has been an explicit policy focus in Australia over six decades. Over this period, successive governments have employed a range of approaches aimed at creating socially representative university populations. Nonetheless, the proportional under-representation of people from low socioeconomic status (LSES) backgrounds has persisted. Since the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008), equity has grown in importance, such that it is now viewed as a core responsibility for all institutions (Gale, 2011a). Widening participation (WP) in higher education involves three key processes: (1) increasing awareness of, and aspirations for, higher education in students from LSES backgrounds; (2) developing processes that facilitate these students gaining access to university; and (3) once enrolled, providing strategies that support the retention and success of these students. Of these three processes, universities in Australia have put more resources into the first two (Peacock et al., 2014).
Under this recent system, the focus has been located on WP by increasing enrolments and retention of students from LSES backgrounds, indigenous people and those from regional and remote areas. These agendas have explicitly sought to improve the representation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds that has ‘remained static at about 15 per cent’ over two decades (Bradley et al., 2008: xi; Cuthill and Schmidt, 2011; James, 2007; Krause et al., 2009). This approach is not exclusive to Australia, but follows a UK model that, under former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, responded to economic and equity concerns by working towards WP of under-represented students (Yorke and Thomas, 2003).
The social justice potential of WP has been called into question in regards to concern over inconsistent definitions (Rizvi and Lingard, 2011); conflicting interests in framing WP as both an equity and economic project (Archer, 2007); and the potential for vocational imbalance through the policy failure to match university intake with vocational shortages (Montague, 2013). What do they translate into if, as Ball (2008) states: ‘Policies are contested, interpreted and enacted in a variety of arenas or practices and the rhetoric, texts and meanings of policy makers do not always translate directly and obviously into institutional practices’ (Ball, 2008: 94)?
In order to answer this question we begin by engaging with current policy analysis work on the WP agenda, then undertake an examination of three publicly available institutional texts as ‘statements of commitment’. We then proceed by drawing on interview data from one post-1988 university in Australia as a case study to examine the enactment of the WP agenda through analysis of the perceptions of practitioners concerned with equity practices and WP. We ask what a commitment to equity, as stated in the institutional policy documents, achieves with regards to equity and WP. We argue that statements of commitment to equity and WP from universities in the current neoliberal policy assemblage can function to mask the ways in which universities continue to interpret: ‘educational values in largely economic terms’ (Rizvi and Lingard, 2011: 20).
WP, equity and policy work
The framing of WP has been explored through textual analyses of higher education policy documents to demonstrate how language works in relation to broader discourses of equity, diversity and justice. Through such examinations the political, economic and social agendas that drive higher education equity policy have been revealed as central to understandings of how policies are formed, how they will eventually be implemented and what they mean for practice (Passy, 2012; Rizvi and Lingard, 2011).
Consistencies of discourses within the policies have been examined to understand how coherent they are in their projection of an equity narrative (Passy, 2012; Rizvi and Lingard, 2011). Such analysis can focus on an examination of the discourses that emerge as dominant within policy documents, as well as those that are less salient and therefore rhetorically less important (Rizvi and Lingard, 2011; Taylor, 2004). For example, in the UK’s comparable ‘Aimhigher’ higher education policy, which was aimed at increasing LSES participation in the higher education sector, Passy (2012) found that the former New Labour government’s Aimhigher policy primarily espoused the key social democratic values of ‘equity’ and ‘community’. She compares Aimhigher’s core values of equity and community to the values of the current UK coalition government’s higher education policy, arguing that the coalition frame their higher education policies in terms of ‘freedom’ and ‘efficiency’. This rhetoric is coupled with market-based programmes premised on freedom of choice for education consumers and competition between institutions. Comparing the two, she finds that Aimhigher programmes – couched in terms of community and equity – are more conducive to supporting student success than the coalition’s market-based programmes, which use the rhetoric of freedom and efficiency.
In comparable analyses in the Australian context of the Bradley Review of Higher Education (Bradley et al., 2008), Rizvi and Lingard (2011) found that rhetorical use of social democratic values, such as equity and community, are used alongside values of efficiency and liberty, which are commonly associated with a conservative market-based or neoliberal notion of justice. The amalgamation of competing ideological discourses within the one policy document potentially produces an incoherent and problematic policy narrative (Rizvi and Lingard, 2011; Taylor, 2004).
Language use is central to policy narratives. The words and phrases used contribute to a narrative that frames issues of equity, diversity, justice and success in variable ways. Where success at university comes from, for example, is a contentious notion, and policies can frame the successful and capable student in remarkably differing ways (Southgate and Bennett, 2014). The ways in which policy explains how success comes about, in turn, can determine: ‘who gets what, when and how’ (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010: 76). Fassett and Warren (2004) provide a useful explanation of differing ways in which success and failure in the university system can be defined. They characterise three discourses of higher education success: individualism, victimisation and authenticity. The individualistic discourse of university student success implies that success is entirely an effect of the individual. This involves rhetoric of individual effort and personal choice and ignores broader contextual issues. Fassett and Warren’s (2004) exploration of languages about successful and unsuccessful educational identities thus finds that success and failure within the educational context can be rhetorically formed along a spectrum of agency-system. Extreme individualism overlooks the role of the system in the production of educational disadvantage, while extreme victimisation overlooks and restricts the role of student agency in the achievement of success.
While policy analyses discussed above have interrogated the various ways in which the WP agenda has been framed in problematic and even contradictory ways, Stevenson et al. (2010) have sought to examine the relationship between WP policy and practice given: ‘little research has looked beyond the discursive framing of WP to how staff in institutions make sense of WP’ (Stevenson et al., 2010: 105). Stevenson et al. (2010) found inconsistency in equity discourse in policy documents was reflected in staff uncertainty about the university’s WP agenda. Without a guiding principle, references to the institution’s policies on participation and justice were eclectic and lacked internal consistency. By focusing on the understanding of WP among staff in higher education institutions, they establish that WP is poorly understood, thus leaving it incapable of having a lasting effect on general institutional culture.
Institutions’ speech acts and WP
Ball (2008) distinguishes between the use of big-P policies, that is, formal and legislated public policy and little-p policy: those that are ‘formed and enacted within localities and institutions’ (Ball, 2008: 8). Thus for Ball, policy: ‘is not taken to be an object, a product or an outcome, but rather process, something ongoing, interactional and unstable’ (Ball, 2008: 8). ‘Impression management’ (Ball, 2000: 10) has been used to describe tensions in little-p policy work that takes place in universities between the tasks of providing useful information to potential students but also essential in branding and promoting universities in the current higher education marketplace.
Recently, Graham (2013) examined in a range of publicly available documents, the discursive strategies used by universities to position themselves on the WP agenda and to explore representations of institutional commitment made available for prospective students. Graham’s findings noted a clear difference in the subjectification discourses in relation to WP utilised seven years ago by old and new English universities to a less polarised position within four years. In the midst of a new political and fiscal agenda where a greater stated onus has been placed on all universities to ensure WP and fair access as a means to buttressing the soon-to-be implemented increase to student fees caps (Cable and Willetts, 2011): ‘the post-1992 institutions… (were) placing more emphasis on the quality of their courses and the prestige of the institution. Conversely, the pre-1992 (institutions)… appeared to be moving towards more inclusive ways of marketing themselves’ (Graham, 2013: 77). Yet this trend was cautioned as potentially temporary, a hesitancy in the face of changes to be implemented (Bowl and Hughes, 2014; Graham, 2013), as well as being symbolic of an overall shift away from the WP agenda (Bowl and Hughes, 2014; Leach, 2013; McCaig and Adnett, 2009).
Bowl and Hughes (2014) reiterated the findings of McCaig and Adnett (2009) around efforts at WP by pre-1992 universities. These efforts were located predominantly within their standing practices of student selection, allowing them to: ‘use WP funding to help cement their reputation as “selecting” institutions with high entry standards, but willing to take high-achieving students from poor and under-represented groups’ (McCaig and Adnett, 2009: 34). Stated efforts in public documents were used as a way to soften their public image, compared with the efforts of other similarly ‘elite’ universities and not with those of the wider sector (Bowl and Hughes, 2014). By segregating themselves from the rest of the sector in such a way, the elite institutions examined by Bowl and Hughes: ‘downplayed their poor performance in widening participation relative to other institutions in their region, while asserting their commitment to fair access. Such a response is a compromise (on WP), or possibly an avoidance response, or a manifestation of both’ (Bowl and Hughes, 2014: 11).
The shift in discourse was more significant for the supposedly ‘recruiting’ universities. The narratives between access agreements and publicity material on WP reflected a contradictory emphasis. Whereas access agreements demonstrated clearly their high positioning with regards to WP and access, publicity and recruitment literature shifted towards an emphasis on selectively chosen positions from university league tables that denoted distinction – such as graduate employment success and industry preparedness – while downplaying WP endeavours, in a possible reflection of: ‘the tension between equity and market positioning’ (Bowl and Hughes, 2014): For the sake of survival these institutions needed to set their fees as high as the market would bear. A lower fee level might carry an implication of lower quality (and therefore lower value for money). In this case, projecting themselves as too accessible might be a risky strategy. Their lower positioning in (or absence from) the university league tables could reinforce the perception of lower value and status. (Bowl and Hughes, 2014: 13)
This analytical focus on institutional policy has been concerned with examining the external effects of such text in relation to students, particularly those that are prospective, or outside the higher education institution. In contrast, we turn the gaze inwards to examine how these institutional texts, in the form of statements of commitments made by universities, work internally in relation to practice. To do this, Ahmed’s (2012) work on speech acts provides direction on the question of the effects of little-p policy on equity and WP in the university context.
Ahmed (2012) provides a framework for conceptualising diversity work in higher education by considering the connections between policy documents and the practices of those working in the field. Ahmed’s (2012) work is based primarily on higher education institutions in the UK during the introduction of the Race Relations Amendment Act of 2000 and the Equality Act of 2010. She focuses on the effects of this institutionalisation of diversity, and in particularly how such processes can work to conceal racism in higher education institutions. However, it also provides an account of how institutions work is grounded in the insights of those struggling to change them. In relation to this goal she writes: Institutions provide a frame in which things happen (or don’t happen). To understand how “what happens” happens, we actually need to narrow (rather than widen) the frame: to think about words, texts, objects, and bodies, to follow them around, to explore what they do and do not do, when they are put into action. (Ahmed, 2012: 49–50)
Ahmed’s framework provides us with a variety of entry points into the actions of institutions by drawing on the work of J. L. Austin to focus attention on the status of official descriptions in institutions: an ‘institutional speech act’ (Ahmed, 2012: 54). As a form of text, institutional speech acts: ‘might involve naming: the institution is named, and in being given a name, it is also given attributes, qualities, and even character’ (Ahmed, 2012: 54). The power in examining institutional speech acts lies in the premise that: ‘Once we realise that what we have to study is not the sentence but the issuing of the utterance in a speech-situation, there can hardly be any longer a possibility of not seeing that stating is a performing act’ (Austin, cited in Ahmed, 2012: 55–56). Austin’s speech acts conceptualise situations in which statements perform an action rather than refer to truths or falsehoods, such as promising or apologising. Ahmed (2012) continues: ‘… I suggest that the performative aspects of what are apparently descriptive utterances are more explicable if we focus on the institution. Official descriptions are part of an aesthetic and moral order: an appearance of valuing’ (Ahmed, 2012: 59). To elaborate her position on institutional speech acts, Ahmed pays close attention to statements of commitment in that they offer a public valuing in the form of an institutional message.
Statements of commitment and the variable valuing of the WP agenda
Below we provide analyses of three university strategic plans as statements of commitment from different higher education institutions operating at a time when government policy stemming from the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008) demands a commitment to equity, access and WP from all Australian universities. The three statements of commitment made by various Australian universities were in the form of mission statements and strategic plans made publicly available on the internet. In the reflection below, we consider how statements of commitment in the form of strategic plans of universities can be used to examine the institutional valuing of WP.
For example, one university’s current strategic plan makes no mention of key phrases such as ‘equity’, ‘diversity’ or ‘social justice’ in the Vice-Chancellor’s message, neither does the university’s Statement of Purpose and Values. The one reference to social and cultural diversity within the first three pages of the strategic plan states that the university aims to create conditions in which ‘the most promising students, whatever their social or cultural background, can thrive and realise their full potential’. As the first pages of the plan that orient the reader to its scope and content, it is symbolic that equity and diversity issues are not salient within the opening pages.
Furthermore, as with the above quote, the rhetoric of the second university’s strategic plan consistently invokes seeking and attracting talented and ‘promising’ students. Such rhetoric implies that this second university aims to glean intellectually elite students. This theme of gleaning elite students continues when the advertisement turns to equity and diversity aspirations: Attracting promising students whatever their social or cultural background is core to our sense of purpose and consistent with our history. Our aim is to diversify our student population and, particularly, to increase the participation of students from low socioeconomic, Indigenous, rural and remote backgrounds. We are committed to improving the preparation, aspiration and achievement of intellectually able students from groups currently under-represented in our student population.
A third university’s strategic plan has equity concerns interwoven throughout, including the ‘graduate attributes’, the ‘mission’ and the ‘values’ sections, and the ‘four core goals’ section. The consistency of rhetorical references to ethical and equitable practice is complimented by a narrative of community throughout. The phrase ‘community’ is generally associated with social democratic values, potentially reflecting the discourse with which the university is aligned. References to equity within this strategic plan include: We extend internationally recognised educational opportunities for our diverse student body, including those from rural and regional communities We advance human rights and are committed to providing opportunities for students and staff in an inclusive, culturally safe environment Ensure equitable access for students to meaningful support services, IT and infrastructure regardless of location and mode of delivery.
Yet, while statements of commitment can be seen as performatives in relation to wider policy documents on WP and equity more broadly, they can also be considered performatives in relation to what institutions support. While working on the WP agenda may involve working with documents such as federal government policy and institutional statements of commitment, such as mission statements and strategic plans that show how different institutions in different ways envision themselves as committed to equity and WP, it also involves something substantially more. As Ahmed (2012) writes: ‘These documents seem to “commit” the institution to do something. Or do they?’ (Ahmed, 2012: 114). Statements of commitment do not necessarily do what they say, but it is also not exactly clear what they are doing if they do not do what they claim. In order to look at what statements of commitments do, Ahmed suggests we follow these texts as they move through institutions. To track what texts do, we need to follow them around. If texts circulate as documents or objects within public culture, then our task is to follow them, to see how they move as well as how they get stuck. So rather than just looking at university documentation on diversity for what it says, although I do this, as close readings are important and necessary, I also ask what they do, in part by talking to practitioners who use these documents to support their actions. (Ahmed, 2006: 105)
Institutional perspectives on WP
In order to ascertain what such texts do, we explore the statements of commitment pertaining to equity issues and the WP agenda in one university in relation to its internal audience: academic and professional staff.
Academic and professional staff were invited via internal staff email to take part in interviews to gather perspectives on institutional responses to the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008) as well as more general perspectives on student transition and retention in the context of the Australian WP agenda. Academic staff from seven faculties were invited, as were professional staff working in departments relating directly to the student experience, such as student administration, the library, academic skills, careers, counselling, equity services and disability services. A total of 78 staff (41 professional and 37 academic) were interviewed. The project was cleared through a university Human Research Ethics Committee. 1
Semi-structured interview questions with slight variations were utilised for different functions or departments. Interviews and focus groups were informal and in most cases lasted approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour. Interviews and focus groups were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data analysis focused on a contextualisation of responses rather than dissection into themes (Ezzy, 2002: 103). This approach was utilised to focus on relationships between participants’ understandings of WP and the broader institutional frameworks, such as those articulated in strategic plans, mission statements and policy contexts, and how they functioned for internal stakeholders in an organisation.
Equity as a purpose of the university
Participants in this research perceived that their university’s mission statement reflected concerns about equity as being central to the overall purpose of higher education institutions. Generally, staff were in agreement that a core purpose of the university was to be concerned with issues relating to justice (among the variety of other purposes a university is concerned with). According to participants, this is evident in the mission statement itself and that is generally conveyed through the ways the university functions. Interpretation of this statement of commitment, however, reflected a decoding: ‘which relates the smaller with the bigger picture… that is, institutional priorities and possibilities to political necessities’ (Ball et al., 2012: 44). At one level, this process tapped into a federal push to improve equity outcomes. The Bradley Review (Bradley et al., 2008), for example, has impacted on the nature of equity work at the university. As one professional staff member succinctly commented: The core business remains the same, but the evidence that we look for, there’s been certainly some much stronger connections towards equity groups, in terms of providing support to key equity groups. (JPMCAPS08)
Participants also thought that the mission statement nurtured the promotion of altruism, that is, care for other people, which many staff perceived as being central to approaches to equity in higher education. Participants agreed that, given the explicit nature of this focus in statements of commitment, staff were already likely to commit with both ‘hearts and minds’ (Ahmed, 2012: 113) to an agenda of social justice at the university.
Participants, however, did raise concerns regarding the university’s core purpose as reflecting equity initiatives, presenting within the staff body perspectives that make: ‘“official” interpretations or narratives more difficult to sustain or slightly less credible’ (Ball et al., 2012: 63). Tensions were perceived by many staff in relation to the current meaning of ‘social justice’. Despite the multiple ways that the terminology was read by staff, most common was a perceived concern by staff that the university did not live the mission statement, rendering itself more as a business model than as a space embodying ethical experience and inclusiveness. As one participant stated: Like the Mission Statement I see is a very powerful document that gives us the mandate for running things but it’s not a living document. (JPSTPPS03) I don’t think our behaviour, as an institution, matches that mission statement. I think that we’ve a mismatched focus. We’ve got a focus on a business model and we’re an education sector, and I think the students lose in that sort of environment. And I … yes, I just … I’d like us to have a better feel within the university. (JPSTPPS11)
Some participants were concerned with the silencing or marginalisation of student voices as one manifestation of the disconnect between the saying and the doing of equity at the university.
Others were concerned about the level of inflexible bureaucratic policies underpinning the university functioning, which they felt posed a hindrance to translating the university’s vision into action.
Moreover, the increasing day-to-day issues on the direction of the university were felt by many professional and academic staff, as it moved into a more research-intensive phase. The ‘push for research’ has resulted in tensions between the cultures of student support and research, reflecting what Ball et al. (2012) highlight as policy translations competing for attention. Institutional policies, such as research intensification: ‘“drip”, “seep” and “trickle down” into classroom practice to become part of the bricolage of teaching and learning activities, sedimented upon or displacing previous translation effects’ (Ball et al., 2012: 47). According to participants, this shift often compromised the time necessary for support for students. So I suppose the question is, given that these are very good goals of the welfare state, they’re compassionate goals, they’re goals about enabling people to flourish and to develop to their full capacity and so on, are there enough resources going to academics to enable them to achieve those goals and to continue with their traditional and very valuable roles as researchers, as academic leaders, as people who have leisure in the best and classical sense of the word, and I think those are very important questions and I think at [this university] we are trying to engage with those questions, but I think these, it is a generally challenging situation for lecturers to try to maintain some progress in their own research and writing and academic leisure in the best, the truest sense of the word while at the same time responding to these goals of the welfare state. So I think that that’s a very real issue and it doesn’t, I suppose, affect me so much as someone who’s a professor and not far from retirement, but I do feel that concern for younger academics who are attempting to publish and to seek promotion and so on. (JPMSMA23)
In addition to the statement of commitment identifying between the ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’, it also functioned to identify the additional commitments that circulate alongside commitments in the form of actions. Ahmed (2012) uses the notion of: ‘follow-up actions’ (Ahmed, 2012: 120) to direct attention towards the ways that we can do something with a statement of commitment. The provision of resources as a way of following up a statement of commitment was one way participants distinguished between what Ahmed refers to ‘hopeful performatives’ (2012: 67). A hopeful performative, that is: ‘a certain confidence in outcomes premised on the possibility that what comes out might be just that’ (Ahmed, 2010: 182), could be distinguished by a lack of resources provision in this instance, thereby relegating the speech act to the category of a statement of commitment that sounds good, or that simply actualises it if it is said enough times. There’s always going to be people that slip through the gaps, but I think our problem we’ve got now, the problem we’re facing is we’re growing so quickly that how do you retain that while also, potentially, having 5,000 students next year? … It’s easy to do when we have maybe a couple of hundred to a thousand, and even 2,000, you can probably manage that, but going beyond that, again, it comes down to resourcing … So it’s really the university’s decision on, do you want the students to feel supported and taken care of, or do you want to grow the numbers? So by default the students probably don’t really get much of a say in that, because it becomes more of an organisational decision that needs to be made, and where are they going to put their money and resources? (JPMCAPS08)
Many academic participants expressed their concerns regarding the provision of resources. One member reflected that the amount of money received by the faculties ‘hasn’t gone up commensurate with the numbers of students that are coming in’. Another, from the sciences, pointed out that this impacts directly on teaching since there is not ‘enough equipment for students’ as well as ‘lab space’ and ‘tutorial rooms’. A section of the academic staff also argued that the lack of a student-orientated building poses a hindrance to ‘contemporary learning’, both in terms of group work or studying between lectures. Moreover, according to some academic staff, ‘working out staffing every semester’ due to a changing cohort of sessional staff is a major issue in all faculties and this impacts on quality teaching and learning. In some ways that is probably a good thing because I can burn myself out by doing that but at the same time it means that when you have got 200 (students), you are not following up the one person who didn’t hand up an assignment. I have learned a lot more to be tough and say well, if they didn’t hand up, they didn’t hand up. Their problem. They will sort it. Whereas to be quite frank, five years ago I probably would have picked up the phone and said, oh Tom, I didn’t get your assignment. I just don’t have the time to do that now (JPMSMA09)
As such, these issues reflect Gale’s (2011b) attention to the issues of resourcing required to expand Australia’s higher education system. Drawing on recent demographic work, Gale writes: that to meet the Government’s planned increased student participation targets, academics will need to expand in number over the next decade, in a context of low take up in academia among graduate students, and high levels of attrition from the current academic workforce: to retirement, to overseas destinations, and to other sectors of employment. The Government’s expansion agenda will also place high demands on the sector’s infrastructure. To meet its 20/40 targets, an estimated 220,000 extra student places will be needed by 2025. (Gale, 2011b: 670)
WP and the underbelly of the neoliberal policy assemblage in higher education
While statements of commitment can not only fail to realise their claims in regard to WP, they can also: ‘block action, insofar as the document then gets taken up as evidence that we have done the work… The idea that the document is itself an action is what could allow the institution to block recognition of the work there is to do’ (Ahmed, 2006: 117). Such blocking is important as it directs us to ways that institutions are maintained through the micro interactions of institutional life. Institutional speech acts in the form of statements of commitment from universities that may work to set institutional agendas through the presentation of a polished institutional order, but they also risk concealing a great deal, particularly the recognition of non-ideal situations. That is, while statements of commitment are focused on providing a clear account of what it takes for WP to succeed, the inference is that failure or obstacles to such an agenda will automatically vanish from the picture. The problem is that in some contexts – for example, in newer universities, where diversity could be seen to have strong marketing appeal – it is presumed that the claim of diversity of the institutions (the presence of ‘colourful’ faces of students, i.e. being diverse) itself does diversity’. (Kimura, 2013: 7)
Previous accounts of doing WP in a post-1992 university in the UK, have noted the prevalence of discourses of blame that circulated around institutional responses to WP (Stevenson et al., 2010). They attributed these discourses: ‘to the contrasting or competing definitions of widening participation held by staff’ (Stevenson et al., 2010: 111) and originating in policy. For Stevenson et al. (2010): ‘the strain between strong personal commitments and a sense that at the institutional level things do not come together’ (Stevenson et al., 2010: 111–112) created a culture of blaming colleagues.
In recent institutional research into WP in Australia, Cuthill and Schmidt (2011) analyse one research-intensive, ‘sandstone’ university and identified WP as challenging: ‘issues such as a history as an “elitist” university, a traditionally rigid approach to university entry and the current decentralised responses that will all challenge this cultural and operational shift’ (Cuthill and Schmidt, 2011: 20). Yet, Cuthill and Schmidt (2011) doubted that institutional capacity: ‘limited by a tight funding environment’ (Cuthill and Schmidt, 2011: 18) could make any significant institutional changes. For staff, doing WP was an almost impossible role. ‘For staff who wish to broaden their core work to include widening participation objectives, competing work demands (e.g. research, teaching and administration), limited funding and a lack of faculty support are seen as key constraints’ (Cuthill and Schmidt, 2011: 18). Additionally, research by Peacock et al. (2014) into WP in Australia indicates that: ‘the key policy lever for improving low SES participation rates is for individual universities to recruit as many low SES students as they can in the shortest possible timeframe’ (2014: 379). They surmise that universities are selectively engaging with the WP agenda, concentrating resources on raising levels of participation, rather than putting commensurate resources towards student retention and support. This emphasis on raising participation rates makes the compassionate goals of WP harder to meet when the resources to support staff and the influx of additional students is not provided. That participation is being seen as the key policy lever of WP, makes salient the conflict between the economic and equity aspects of the WP agenda (Archer, 2007; Savage et al., 2013).
The WP and equity agenda in a post-Bradley policy context, under a conservative government, is even more unclear (Leach, 2013). As universities continue to position themselves in the marketplace, competing for students and funding, statements of commitment take on increasing significance. The underbelly of these changes also includes continued threats to resourcing, reduced academic and staffing provision, lower credential status, battles over legitimate knowledges and dangers associated with reductions in the autonomy of a university through increased reliance on favourable policy contexts or external stakeholders. Between a rock and a hard place of competing external policies, the current upheaval in the political and social context of higher education for those working inside institutions on WP policy agendas are just as paralysing as those policy narratives that were ambiguous and contradictory. As the participants’ voices in our study show, statements of commitment to WP are not experienced in institutional life in ways that bring about the realisation of what is being said. However, finding spaces and ways to explore the underbelly of the neoliberal project, to tell the truth about its impacts and to consider alternatives (Maisuria, 2014), demonstrate that it may be possible to go beyond the neoliberal imaginary (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010).
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.