Strategies for Securing Equity in Access and Success in Higher Education

The Vol 17.2 of IAU Horizons has just been released! This issue provides the reader with additional information on the upcoming IAU 2011 International Conference, including a summary of the Conference Programme.Dowload Strategies for Securing Equity in Access and Success in Higher Education. The In Focus section of this issue includes a series of papers from around the world which focus on different aspects relating to the broader theme of the Conference: Strategies for Securing Equity in Access and Success in Higher Education. In addition, this volume provides information on IAU on-going and new projects and includes the traditional rubrics of : News from Members; IAU Collaboration and Networking; New Publications, and the Global Calendar of Events of which a longer version is available online.
MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
As the academic year gets underway in the Northern hemisphere, students who have succeeded in gaining access to higher education are settling in and embark on the exciting journey towards graduation. Unfortunately this statement does not reflect the reality for many – too many potential students are not entering higher education and far too many will drop out, never completing their program. The twin challenges of providing equitable access or widening participation and securing success or retention remain illusive in many nations, especially in light of some of the targets that governments are setting. The reasons for this state of affairs varies – students do not access higher education because places are too scarce, their preparation was inadequate, the costs are too high, their aspirations do not include higher education. And they do not succeed because programs are not relevant to their needs or interests, they cannot overcome their initial poor preparation, their language skills are insufficient, they feel lost, the need to earn a living is too great to stay in school, etc.
Yet, higher education is the key to a better future for individuals, societies and nations. So, what can be done to open the doors more widely and accompany those who need it on their learning path? What can be done to ensure that the increasingly pervasive competition does not exclude ever-larger numbers of people or groups from achieving their goals by limiting their access to higher education (HE)?
Helping institutions of higher education find answers to these basic questions has been the focus of IAU’s work on Access and Success in higher education and the focus of this issue of IAU Horizons. The publication coincides with the IAU 2011 International Conference, hosted by Kenyatta University in Nairobi on the same topic and authors of some of the articles in the ‘in focus’ section will be presenting at this event. Their papers focus on countries where overall participation rates remain too low – Kenya and East Africa, or far too elitist as in parts of Latin America, or still dealing with the legacy of racial segregation as in South Africa. The paper on Japan states that issues of costs, tuition fees and financing are main factors impacting on access. Some other briefs discuss the more basic question of why access and looks at what stands in the way of offering higher education opportunities to all. It is the World Bank authors who remind us that access is necessary for social justice and for efficiency reasons. With a focus on solutions, the description of the Children as Change Agents project, coordinated by the University of Liverpool, offers an innovative strategy to raise aspirations by opening up the HE doors to the very young. The importance of the issue of access and success is such that one of the contributors is urging the redefinition of higher education effectiveness to take this dimension into consideration and the president of the Lumina Foundation in the USA calls ‘resolving the access issue’ a ‘national imperative’.
The extent to which the access and success theme is important to IAU members also became clear to IAU over the past few weeks as we launched a first call for abstracts to enrich the Nairobi Conference sessions. We received excellent papers from around the world. Thanks to those who submitted proposals and congratulations to the 7 which will be presented in Kenya!
In addition, Membership news, the list of upcoming and past events in which IAU staff and leadership have taken part as well as the Events Calendar complete this issue in which you can read the first announcement for the 14th IAU General Conference in 2012, and reports on several IAU projects and on-going activities. Eva Egron-Polak

An introduction to the theme and to the IAU 2011 International Conference by Eva Egron Polak, IAU Secretary General and Elodie Boisfer, IAU, Executive Assistant (iau@iau-aiu.net).
Considering the multiple imperatives that drive the global knowledge-based economy and society, most national governments recognize the need for high quality higher education for all. Moving towards a guarantee of access to learning, and to successful participation in higher education regardless of the gender, [dis]abilities, ethnic and socio economic background of people, is becoming a priority around the world.
It is this reality that has led the IAU to adopt the issues of Equitable Access (widening participation) and Success (retention) in Higher Education as one of its priority themes several years ago. In 2008, the 13th IAU General Conference adopted a Policy Statement entitled Equitable Access and Success in Quality Higher Education, which has now been signed and endorsed by a large number of university associations from around the world. The Statement is available on the IAU website in English and French and additional endorsements are most welcome.
A pilot project, launched by IAU in 2010, was an initial attempt to move beyond the principles and recommendations of the Policy Statement to learn more about institutional developments and concrete actions to improve equity in access and success. The pilot project examined institutional policies and programs designed to improve access and success for learners from under-represented groups at ten HEIs in Asia and the Americas. As pilot institutions they were testing this approach to learn more about and sharing institutional approaches and challenges across vastly different institutions. Their presentations and discussions at a workshop held at the University of Arizona also allowed for a critical examination of an instrument designed by IAU to help in the conduct of institutional self-assessments of policies and practices aiming to improve both entry and progression for students. In his paper published in this In Focus section, Prof. Manuel J. Fernós, President of the Inter American University of Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico) and Chair of the IAU Task Force on Equitable Access and Success, provides more information about the IAU’s work in this domain.
A second initiative in this area is the IAU 2011 International Conference (hosted by Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya) which focuses on Strategies for Securing Equity in Access and Success in Higher Education. Together with the host university, IAU chose this theme because it responds to the interests of our membership and others in higher education. The conference will examine the extent to which government and institutional policies and programs around the world seek and succeed in responding to the imperative of increasing and widening access and success (however it may be defined differently in various circumstances) in higher education. The papers included in this issue of IAU Horizons seek to offer an overview of a few projects, programmes and other approaches put in place all around the world in order to address these themes. The contexts are different, but the goals are clear and easily stated. Yet achieving these goals is far more complex. It requires clarity of purpose, shared commitment, adequate resources, expertise and time. The IAU hopes that its upcoming conference will help to illustrate concretely HEIs’ efforts and initiatives in these areas, effective government policies as well as to share good practices that could be generalized and adopted elsewhere. These papers as well are intended to help stimulate the discussions at the Conference in November.

Widening Access and Promoting Success in Higher Education, by Manuel J. Fernós, President, InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico, USA, Chair, IAU Task Force on Access and Success (mfernos@inter.edu)
It is commonly known that persons from the lowest income groups are less represented in higher education. Yet, they are precisely those who most need support to ensure that they can enter higher education. But due to restricted resources, most countries tend to become increasingly selective in their admissions policies, and students from lower income categories who might have a real desire to progress and complete a higher education degree are often left out of the system. Research shows that this is the case even when specific policies are in place in some countries. Students from low income families still have the lowest access rates, not because they lack the intelligence to enter higher education but often because they lack the proper means to do so...

Access an d Success in Higher Education : Their Contemporary Significance by Olive Mugenda, Vice-Chancellor, Kenyatta University, Kenya and IAU Vice-President (vc@ku.ac.ke; kuvc@nbnet.co.ke)
It is widely acknowledged that the progress made by society in the 21st century is predominantly attributable to the knowledge and skills provided to students, the new generation citizens, by universities. Knowledge-driven economies sit on four main pillars, namely: the economic and institutional pillar, providing incentives for efficient creation, dissemination and use of existing knowledge; the education pillar, which develops an educated workforce that can use knowledge effectively; the innovation pillar that ensures that global knowledge diffuses into the nation and adapts it for local use and creates new local knowledge; and the information and communication technology infrastructure (ICT) pillar that facilitates the effective communication, dissemination and processing of information...

Opportunities for All? The Equity Challenge in Tertiary Education by Jamil Salmi, Tertiary Education Coordinator, The World Bank(Jsalmi@worldbank.org) and Roberta Malee Bassett, Senior Education Specialist, Human Development, Europe and Central Asia Region, The World Bank (rbassett@worldbank.org)
Equity in education has become almost trite as a key element of any education reform effort. Education for All (EFA) and the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) are the best known global initiatives for driving universal access to basic education, placing equity in the center of international education reform for over 15 years. Tertiary education, however, cannot be examined in such a vein, as universal access is not a realistic or sustainable aspiration. Not everyone wishes to enter tertiary education, but those who do aspire to tertiary education should have the opportunity to obtain such an experience. Improving equity in tertiary education, then, becomes an exercise in understanding barriers that exist for those who would or should want to participate but cannot or do not. In spite of the extensive efforts to improve access worldwide, tertiary education – especially the university sector – generally remains accessible mostly to the elite, with the majority of students still coming from privileged segments of society...

Challenges of Higher Education in South Africa: Implications for Equitable Access and Success by John C Mubangizi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Head, College of Law and Management Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (Mubangizij@ukzn.ac.za)
The key challenges facing the South African higher education system remain as outlined in the 1997 Education White Paper 3, namely, to “redress past inequalities and to transform the higher education system to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs, and to respond to new realities and opportunities”. Seen in that context, the first challenge is that of reconstructing social and economic relations to eradicate and redress the inequitable patterns of ownership, wealth and socio-economic practices that were shaped by segregation and apartheid...

Access an d Success in Japanese Higher Education by Masayuki Kobayashi, Center for Research and Development of Higher Education, The University of Tokyo, Japan (masadayo@he.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
To tackle this problem the Japanese Central Council on Education proposed a new grant and loan scheme aimed at improving access to higher education amongst low-income classes. Additionally, our research project is planning a new nationwide survey on access and equality of education opportunities in collaboration with the Council. Our project also plans a comparative survey contrasting with educational reforms in other countries. We have been surveying educational reforms, in particular, policies on tuition fees and student financial aid programs, in Australia, China, England, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden, and the United States. Some of the results of the study are published in Kobayashi (ed.), 2008. We are thus trying to reduce differences in access to higher education in the face of very tight public finances. Furthermore, some universities such as the University of Tokyo have implemented new policies which allow for the waiving of tuition fees for students from low-income families. Our new survey, the results of which will be published online in Japanese in 2013, is expected to reveal the success of these reforms...

Advances or Drawbacks? Issues of Access to Education in Arab Countries by Kamal Abouchedid, Ph.D., Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon (kabouchedid@ndu.edu.lb)
As one scrutinizes the recent impressive stride of educational transformation in the Arab world one might wonder whether or not this transformationhas been attentive to catering to the under-served and vulnerable populations in terms of learning and retention. A cursory look into access to educationover the last decade in the Arab region immediately attests to the tremendous headway achieved in increasing enrolment rates in absolute terms. Despite this,the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in the Arab region still lags behind GER internationally and the persistence of sharp variations in access to education, bothwithin and betweencountries, continues to defy strategies aiming at achieving education for all. This brief article is set to examine both the advancements and setbacks of access to education in Arab countries and to draw attention to areas needing immediate reform...

SiS Catalyst : Children As Change Agents for Science and Society by Tricia Jenkins MBE, Director, International Centre for Excellence in Educational Opportunities, The University of Liverpool, UK and coordinator SIS Catalyst (tjenkins@liv.ac.uk)
Across the world there are streets where 8 out of 10 young people go to university, there are also neighborhoods where it is less than 8 in a 100. The reasons for this are historical, socio-economic and educational but also cultural. Where you live, and the income of your parents, defines the life chances of a child. However, increasingly universities are starting to ask themselves the question, what is their role in addressing this inequality?

Access and Equity in Latin American and Caribbean Higher Education by Francisco Lopez-Segrera, Academic Advisor, Global University Network on innovation (GUNi),Spain (francisco.lopez-segrera@upc.edu)
Enrolment at world level jumped from 13million in 1960 to 159 million in 2008 according to the UIS Global Education Digest, 2010 (page 170). The inequity in the access for motives of various kinds (gender, ethnic, religious, social class), continues to deprive many people with sufficient merits to pursue university studies. Tertiary Gross Enrolment Ratios (GERs) range from 70% in North America and Western Europe to 38% in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), 22% in the Arab States and 5% in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, Ivy League private universities in USA, such as Princeton, Yale and Harvard, spent US$100,000 or more per student. The equivalent figure for a student at Dar-es-Salam University was US$3,239...

Miami Da de College: Charting a new path way to student success by Eduardo J. Padrón, President, Miami Dade College, USA (epadron@mdc.edu)
The varied people of our irrevocably contracting planet seem today oddly unified, albeit in a great and tangled web of economic and workplace challenges. For higher education, the volatile and uncertain workforce environment and dramatic technological innovations have provoked a unique pressure to decipher a meaningful direction for teaching and learning in this new global context...

The future of individual citizens: Lumina invests heavily in postsecondary education by Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO, Lumina Foundation, USA (jmerisotis@luminafoundation.org)
Recent gyrations of world financial markets have provided a brusque reminder as to how precarious our global economy really is. Wild market uncertainty has left many looking for near-term fixes, but we believe that the road to greater economic prosperity requires a longer-term view. That is why Lumina Foundation (www.luminafoundation.org/) is investing aggressively in postsecondary education and charting a better path forward through a movement called Goal 2025 (www.luminafoundation.org/goal_2025.html)...

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