The diversity of the English higher education system: a multilevel quantitative analysis

ABSTRACT

Although the diversity of higher education (HE) systems is a widely debated topic in literature, this has been rarely examined considering multiple levels of analysis. This article adopts both a multilevel and longitudinal perspective to study which dimensions of horizontal diversity diversified the English HE system most. Diversity, and how this has changed over time, is investigated at the level of the HE system (macro-level) at the level of homogeneous groups of universities, i.e. mission groups (meso-level), and at the level of individual universities (micro-level). The comprehensive multivariate quantitative analysis performed across the three levels of analysis shows the polarization between research and teaching orientation emerges as the dimension on which the HE system and universities horizontally diversify most together with the internationalization of the student body. The analysis furtherly suggests that mission groups well represent the diversity of the English HE system and universities’ membership in one of these groups emerged as an element that restrains distinctive institutional positioning patterns of universities. Younger universities and those not affiliated to any mission groups are indeed those that present changes in their strategic positioning paths over time, and thus affect more the diversity of the HE system. However, while the horizontal diversity of the HE system has slightly increased over time, this paper also suggests that competition has concurrently contributed to reinforcing the hierarchical stratification of English universities.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• differentiation
• stratification
• positioning
• cluster analysis
• classification tree

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The different classification of fields of study employed by HESA over time did not allow to precisely compared data related to the distribution of students by discipline unless to reduce the number of fields of study through some criteria, which, however, can be debatable and excessively reductionist.

2 For example, if you would like to investigate the vertical diversity of university you may consider measures as the number of citations per academics which is more related to the quality of research, or the employment conditions of graduates in relation to teaching quality.

3 Third-party funds are flows of income coming from all services rendered to outside bodies, including the supply of goods and consultancies. The difference between public vs private third-party funds concerns the nature of subjects from which a university obtain the funding. Public parties are, e.g. hospitals, central and local governments whereas private ones are charities, companies and public corporations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministero dell’istruzione, dell’università e delle ricerca (MIUR) [grant number PRIN 2015 (2015RJARX7)].