Widening participation and contextual entry policy in accounting and finance

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the performance of accounting and finance students entering university via a ‘widening participation’ scheme that seeks to attract students who have been historically under-represented in higher education. Focus is placed on the policy of providing contextual entry offers that recognise that academic qualifications be judged in the social context in which they were achieved. Accounting and finance recruits the highest proportion of ‘widening participation’ students at a UK ‘Russell Group’ university and provides a key arena for investigating widening participation policy. The study is based on a quantitative analysis of relative performance levels over 12 years and interview findings with 27 students. The quantitative results show that those receiving contextual offers perform at least as well at university level as students with equivalent entry qualifications, thereby supporting contextual entry offer policy. The paper also provides insights into why accounting and finance is popular with ‘widening participation’ students.

KEYWORDS:

• Widening participation
• fair access
• social mobility
• contextual entry
• accountancy profession

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the interviewees in taking time to offer their candid views, and the data collation assistance provided by Dan Herbert, Anne Snell and Shavie Manku. I acknowledge the financial assistance of the University Educational Enhancement Fund.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A self-selected group of 24 ‘leading’ UK universities (see http://russellgroup.ac.uk/ for details).

2. Using the 1992 Standard Occupational Coding System.

3. Research led universities established before 1992 that generally have higher entry requirements.

4. New universities, including many former polytechnics, established after 1992 that generally have lower entry requirements.

5. Universities across the UK typically make students conditional entry offers based on gaining or exceeding specific grades in their school Advanced Level (A-level) examinations. Offers are commonly made to students on the basis of three grades (for example, BBB). A standardised system is used to convert grades into numerical equivalents known as ‘tariff points’. This enables students to enter University with qualifications other than A-levels as long as grades offer the same level of tariff points as the equivalent ‘grade offer’.

6. For the programme under investigation, contextual entry offers are normally two A-level grades below the ‘standard’ offer. However, for other programmes at that institution, and across other institutions, the difference between the contextual and standard offer varies.

7. Each WP student is matched with all other potential pairings on a weighted basis (see Stuart & Rubin, 2008). For example, a WP male student with AAB from 2015 would be matched with all other male non-WP students with AAB from 2015 (all eligible non-WP students are matched no more than once and where more than one match is available, matches are based on the basis of the similarity of entry subjects).

8. The sample was analysed to ascertain whether systematic differences in the choices of A-level entry subjects between WP and non-WP students may influence the respective performance of each group. As the most popular subjects were very similar across both WP and non-WP groups, it is concluded that subject choice did not have a significant impact on the results. For example, the top four A-level subjects for both the WP and non-WP students groups were identical: Mathematics, Economics, Accounting and Business Studies.

9. UK high school qualifications typically completed by age 16 before students can opt to leave compulsory education.

10. Pre-university qualifications in the UK.

11. A State-funded selective school.