Stratification and the illusion of equitable choice in accessing higher education

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the Australian higher education landscape has achieved significant expansion. Initially aimed at getting more people into university, massification policies have, more recently, focused on widening participation – encouraging a more diverse array of students to ‘choose’ higher education. Paradoxically, this shift has deepened stratification, with new inequalities within and across the academy. However, this stratification is glossed over in widening participation policy and research. In this paper, we challenge this view by examining young people’s capacities to ‘choose’ university using the heuristic of ‘embedded choosers’ and ‘contingent choosers.’ Our analysis of two school-based case studies highlights the early stratification of students’ post-school choices, conceptualised as a continuum from an absence of choice to a wide array of global choice. We argue that rather than focus on gains in overall enrolment, there is a critical need to address the insidious stratification that is subsumed within the widening participation agenda.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• equity
• widening participation
• stratification
• choice

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Central schools are those that provide education to students from Kindergarten to Year 12.

2. TAFE is the main provider of vocational education in NSW.

Additional information

Funding

The Aspirations Longitudinal Study was funded by the Australian Research Council and the NSW Department of Education.