2019 EDULOG
International Conference

Widening access to higher education became an issue of political concern after the Second World War. On the one hand, widening access was aimed at improving social justice by means of granting equal conditions of access to all social groups. On the other hand, increasing the participation in higher education was necessary for improving economic performance because a more educated population would contribute to the economic competitiveness of countries. This led to a political compromise with enlarging access to higher education and, consequently, to increasing rates of participation across the world, with students for whom higher education used to be out of reach now being able to study at tertiary level. This was not a homogenous process as countries have followed different paths at different points in time.

It was believed that social inequalities could be reduced through the massification of higher education. To begin with, admission was based on academic merit, using secondary school achievement as the criterion. Gradually, admission procedures became diversified in order to consider other criteria and facilitate the enrolment of students with particular social characteristics. This was supported by the creation of shorter higher education programmes (in many cases in polytechnic institutions) and/or by the growing private sector. However, the experience and the time elapsed have shown that this has not happened as expected for a number of reasons. First, massification resulted in degree inflation and in the diminishing value of qualifications as positional goods, both in social and economic contexts. Second, this went hand in hand with the stratification of higher education systems in more and less prestigious institutions, evident in the segregation of the publics they target and admit. Third, in many countries, massification has been achieved through the expansion of the private sector, driven by for-profit ambitions, often incompatible with the aim of social justice. Massification, therefore, has been insufficient to solve the problem of social inequalities in higher education participation.

Although progress has been made regarding the expansion and diversification of the student body, social inequalities seem to persist, not only because there are still students unable to enter higher education, but also because some institutions and/or programmes continue out of the reach of disadvantaged students (which may differ from one context to another – e.g. gender, social class, ethnic group, race or geographic isolation). Additionally, even when access is not an issue, there may be problems with the academic success, retention, attainment and progression beyond graduation. It is therefore important to identify, in each particular context, which are the conditions favouring the persistence of social inequalities and at what level these mostly occur (access, institutional stratification, retention or attainment) in order to be able to redress the problem and stay committed to the social equity goal.

The conference aims to bring together experiences from different national contexts regarding the challenges they each face and their approaches to dealing with social inequality in higher education participation. It is expected that the contributions of speakers from different countries will give a comprehensive picture of the complexity of the phenomena, which in turn can inform the practices aimed at reducing social inequality in Portuguese higher education.