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ABSTRACT
England and the United States provide a very interesting pairing as countries with many similarities, but also instructive dissimilarities, with respect to their policies for higher education access and success. We focus on five key policy strands: student information provision; outreach from higher education institutions; student financial aid; affirmative action or contextualisation in higher education admissions; and programmes to improve higher education retention and completion. At the end, we draw conclusions on what England and the US can learn from each other. The US would benefit from following England in using Access and Participation Plans to govern university outreach efforts, making more use of income-contingent loans, and expanding the range of information provided to prospective higher education students. Meanwhile, England would benefit from following the US in making greater use of grant aid to students, devoting more policy attention to educational decisions students are making in early secondary school, and expanding its use of contextualised admissions. While we focus on England and the US, we think that the policy recommendations we make carry wider applicability. Many other countries with somewhat similar educational structures, experiences, and challenges could learn useful lessons from the policy experiences of these two countries.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 UK institutions are public in that they have royal charters and other forms of public authorisation and regulation.
2 HE policy within the UK is devolved, leading to policy divergence among the UK nations. Here we focus on England, unless stated otherwise.
3 In another report, we also examine another two policies: performance funding for higher education and reliance on sub-baccalaureate institutions (including for-profit colleges) (Dougherty and Callender Citation2017).
4 For theoretical perspectives and research findings on the role of information in higher education access and choice, see Dougherty (Citation2018).
5 We should note, however, the burgeoning US movement for tuition-free provision of public higher education, particularly at community colleges (Li and Mishory Citation2018; National Conference of State Legislatures Citation2017).
6 Tuition at English universities also tends to be higher than at US universities. Most English universities charge £9250, which converts to about $11,380, as compared to the average instate tuition at US public four-year colleges and universities of $10,230 in 2018–19 (College Board Citation2018b, 9; Murphy, Scott-Clayton, and Wyness Citation2017).
7 However, the OfS cannot regulate university admissions because this would be deemed as interfering with a university’s autonomy.
8 However, the UK Conservative government under David Cameron called for efforts to bring in more white working-class males, because they are the most under-represented in higher education (UK BIS Citation2016a, Citation2016b). Moreover, a recent policy change is that in the future the name of applicants will be removed from their UCAS form when their form is sent to universities. This is meant to tackle selection bias based on racial/ethnic origin.
9 However, see the interesting discussion in Reay, Crozier, and Clayton (Citation2009) on how UK universities might benefit from greater attention to the pedagogical benefits of classroom diversity.
10 We make these arguments at greater length in Dougherty and Callender (Citation2017).