Project Funder

Project Team

• Members in IOE
John Micklewright
Lorraine Dearden
Anna Vignoles
Jake Anders

• Members in IFS
Claire Crawford
Alissa Goodman
Michelle Jin

Publications

J. Anders (2012) 'What's the link between household income and going to university? (pdf)'. DoQSS Working Paper 12-01.

Higher Education Funding and Access

Exploring Common Beliefs

Research Focus

The project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, aims to inform the public policy debate on higher education funding and access.

The research team, composed of members from the Institute of Education (IOE) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), are analysing several datasets to help shed light on the drivers of the socio-economic gap in higher education participation, as well as key features of the university experience. Specifically, the project focuses on exploring these seven commonly held beliefs:

  1. 'Many talented 18 year olds from poorer backgrounds are not going to university'
  2. 'Young people from poor backgrounds do not aspire to go to university'
  3. 'Qualified 18 year olds from poorer backgrounds do not apply to university - and if they do, they face discrimination'
  4. 'Tuition fees prevent students from poorer backgrounds from going to university'
  5. 'Poorer children do badly at university'
  6. 'University is for full-time students' 
  7. 'All degrees are worth the same'

Research Data

The data that the team analyse include:

  • Newly available waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), which follows pupils first eligible to enter university in 2008-09.
  • Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).
  • Household survey data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the British Household Panel Study (BHPS).
  • Administrative records for entire cohorts of students in England from the National Pupil Database (NPD) linked to databases from further and higher education, e.g. Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA).

Findings

The findings are being disseminated to policy makers, prospective students and their parents, as well as researchers.

Besides standalone papers, a short accessible book, aimed at a broad market, is to be published by Oxford University Press. This will bring together both existing research and the new analyses undertaken in the project.