Preface
Recently, the recruitment and graduation of an increasingly diverse student population has emerged as a key challenge for higher education institutions. It has also become a topic of global interest. Governments in both the northern and southern hemispheres have embarked on policies that extend higher education beyond massification to universal access (Trow, 2000). A major driver of government policies is the perceived need to develop a more educated workforce to increase the participation of nations in the knowledge economy through increasing the number of people with undergraduate degrees. As a more socially inclusive higher education sector is seen as an important aspect of achieving this goal, university staff in many countries are responding to government imperatives and implementing a social inclusion agenda.
Policies and practices to promote affirmative action, equality of opportunities, and international education are in place in these countries, contributing to increased diversity of student populations in higher education institutions. This is occurring in the context of a dynamic and complex global environment. The development of a globalised higher education market, in which universities compete for students from other countries, generates income for institutions and nations, and helps students, staff and, more generally, the community, to develop international and globalised perspectives. Students are also increasingly mobile, leaving their home countries to enrol in the courses of their choice, and reaping the personal, academic, career and linguistic benefits that an international education experience can bring.
If you teach or support students, or recruit prospective students in a higher education institution, you are probably increasingly aware of the diversity of students’ backgrounds. Students may have a smooth pathway into higher education from school, or one that is affected by family difficulties, disrupted schooling, health problems, or the impact of migration or low socio-economic background on prior educational opportunity. They may be the first generation in their family to enter higher education and hence be unfamiliar with the system. They may be mature age students who are single parents or carers, and they could be care leavers themselves. Students may come from minority ethnic or language backgrounds and, depending on the context, could be indigenous students or students from rural, regional and remote areas where educational opportunities are limited. Many of them will have experienced more than one aspect of having a ‘non-traditional’ background in the context of higher education. Increasingly, they may be students from other countries, often with English as a second or foreign language, who have enrolled in your institution to pursue educational and work opportunities.
The factor that all these students have in common if they are to succeed in their studies is the need to adapt to an institutional climate, and meet institutional requirements, in a context that is not historically organised to meet diverse student needs, and which may be very unfamiliar to them. This, in turn, has implications for the way higher education institutions manage the inclusion of students from diverse backgrounds, and the approaches that they put in place to support them, which is the main concern of this book. At a more specific level, our emphasis is on considering strategies for managing and supporting student diversity that you, as a practitioner, can implement to assist students or prospective students. The focus for our consideration of these issues is a selection of case studies in which learners from some of the diverse backgrounds introduced above describe the factors that affected them and how they were able to succeed in higher education.
The case studies provide a rare opportunity to hear what students with non-traditional backgrounds who have succeeded in higher education tell us about the system and about what works for them. The cases provide a space in which they tell their stories of challenge and success and how they can be best supported to succeed. In their own words, the students explain the types of support and strategies, both administrative and academic, which have helped – or hindered – them in their journey towards achieving an undergraduate degree. Overall, the cases provide an authentic account of factors affecting the student experience. They are a rich primary resource from which university staff can draw as they discuss and make decisions about approaches for working with students from similar backgrounds. They can also be used with prospective students from diverse backgrounds to inspire, motivate and inform them about how others have succeeded.
The study that informs the book
The case studies are derived from a longitudinal research study of the factors that contributed to the success of a group of students from diverse backgrounds studying at Monash University, Australia. Participants told their stories during semi-structured interviews, following an initial questionnaire in which students were invited to self-identify if they considered themselves to come from diverse backgrounds such as those noted earlier, or they thought of themselves as coming from a nontraditional background for another reason. Participants included students who were studying on-campus and some who were studying off-campus as distance education students. Interviews were undertaken three times during their course. At the start of their course, participants discussed their pathways into higher education. While their studies were in progress, they commented on how they were managing. Finally, they reflected on their experiences at the end of their course.
Reflecting the nature of the case study approach, the students’ stories provide an in-depth understanding of complex social phenomena. Many students from diverse backgrounds experience a similar range of issues when they enter higher education, and it is these common issues that extend the relevance of the cases beyond the local context. The project was concerned primarily with inclusive education by investigating the factors that contribute to successful study by students such as these. Our definition of student success is provided in Chapter 1.
The structure of the book
In this book we explore the issues facing students from diverse backgrounds as they embark on and engage with their higher education studies, and identify the factors that contribute to their success. The book is primarily intended as a practical resource within the framework of recent literature on strategies for supporting social inclusion in higher education. It is structured as follows.
Chapter 1 provides the context for the cases that are introduced in the following chapters. We begin by defining some of the key terms and concepts used in the book and then provide an overview of international trends in widening participation in higher education. This is followed by an explanation of some theoretical perspectives underpinning the concept of social inclusion. We then outline the related opportunities and challenges, and consider strategies that have been suggested for improving access and retention, as background to summarising some of the ways that universities can facilitate successful study by students from nontraditional backgrounds. As you progress through subsequent chapters, you may find it useful to compare these ideas with the implications emerging from each student’s story.
We then discuss the role of participatory research, and of the student voice, which were used in the preparation of the students’ stories, to highlight their value as a means of informing decision-making about the management and support of student diversity in higher education. Finally, we provide a brief introduction to the cases that follow, before summarising key points made in the chapter and suggesting preliminary discussion topics to help you prepare to explore the issues raised in the book.
Chapters 2–6 all follow the same structure as we introduce the cases and consider the implications of the students’ stories. Chapters 2–5 each contain two stories and Chapter 6 three stories. Each story begins with an outline of the particular student’s pathway to higher education, then explains how they managed their studies, and concludes with their reflections and plans following graduation. The names used for the students are pseudonyms, which they selected themselves. Each student’s story highlights a range of factors relating to social inclusion, but we have used the stories in each chapter to explore a particular aspect of managing and supporting student diversity in higher education. All of these chapters end with a summary and some discussion topics for your consideration.
In Chapter 2 we present the stories of Miranda and Rochelle, both of whom were the first in their families to enter higher education. There are differences as well as similarities in their stories, which we use to focus on the complexity of their routes to university. We then consider some implications for managing the transition to higher education and supporting the first year experience of students enrolling from backgrounds such as these.
In Chapter 3, the stories of Sesh and Shannon illustrate how students may have one or more previous attempts at undergraduate study before they find a course and a set of circumstances in their lives that allow them to progress. Their stories highlight the significant challenge of retaining students in higher education when features of their backgrounds may mitigate against successful study, and when students may have had inadequate guidance in their selection of a field of study. Students who withdraw from their initial attempt at university may not enrol again. Shannon’s story also demonstrates the risk that extra university fees and charges, and course requirements such as practicums, pose to students whose financial situation is fragile. We focus on student retention when considering the implications of these stories for university staff.
Chapter 4 addresses issues related to the international experience of students who leave their home countries to study overseas. Lam and Zelin are Chinese women in their early twenties. While they did not experience the social disruption to their education that characterises the backgrounds of students in other chapters, studying in a different culture and unfamiliar education system with English as a second language is a significant challenge for them. Their stories provide a basis for considering the implications for managing and supporting student diversity relating to these aspects of their experiences, and whether or not these implications are the same as those for students from other non-traditional backgrounds.
Chapter 5 presents the stories of Alex Carole and Virginia, who are older than the students considered in the earlier chapters, both enrolling in their courses in their forties. Part of the reason for their enrolment was that ‘it was the right time’ – the circumstances in their lives made university study feasible for them. Through their study they also discovered new dimensions of themselves. We use their stories to consider particular implications for managing and supporting the experience of mature age students.
Lillian, Marie and Harriet were also in their forties when they commenced university study. We consider their stories in Chapter 6. We have grouped these students’ stories together because of the powerful impact that the experience of study had on them, resulting in significant personal transformation. Each of these students refers to major shifts in the ways they understand their identities. While there is evidence of perspective transformation in other students’ stories, the intensity of the changes experienced by Lillian, Marie and Harriet provides an opportunity to consider the implications for staff of supporting perspective transformation in students who have entered higher education via nontraditional pathways.
Finally, in Chapter 7 we review what the participants’ stories have told us about how students from diverse backgrounds succeed in higher education, reflecting on the approaches for helping students succeed which we introduced in Chapter 1. We then discuss the overall implications of the cases for university staff, concluding with a summary of suggested strategies for managing and supporting student diversity in higher education.