1. Improving Access to Higher Education for Pupils from Underprivileged Backgrounds
Dr Arvind Upadhyay
Senior Lecturer in Procurement and Supply Chain
Brighton Business School
University of Brighton, UK

2. Brighton? University of Brighton 21,000 Students 3000 staff
Five campuses

3. How should we define underprivileged pupils?
It is important to have a broad range of criteria for identifying underprivileged pupils. Underprivileged pupils include:
• those eligible for free school meals;
• those from minority groups;
• those in families on low income;
• looked-after children; and
• traveller children.
(Byrne et al. 2013)

4. Deprivation – key facts
After prior attainment, poverty is the single most important factor in predicting a child’s future life chances.
Attainment gaps between pupils from low income families and their more affluent peers persist through all stages of education, including entry into Higher Education.
A pupil from a non-deprived background is more than twice as likely to go on to study at university as their deprived peers.
hants.gov.uk

5. An additional 4 years of education
5 years mortality from 11% to 9.2%
Risk of heart disease from 31% to 28.8%
Risk to diabetes from 7.0% to 6.0%
Number of sick days from 5.2 days to days
Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2007)

6. The Overall Level of Funding of Public HEIs has declined since 2007/08
Expert Group on Future Funding for Higher Education: The Role, Value and Scale of Higher Education in Ireland

7. Not Living with Parents
Costs of Attending HE: Monthly Expenditure (Eurostudent Survey, taken from HEA 2014)
Expenditure Item
Living with Parents
Not Living with Parents
All Students
Accommodation
107
443
334
Food
125
202
177
Transportation
110 94 99
Communication 28 35 33
Health Costs 15 19 18
Childcare 3 16 12
Debt Payment (except mortgage) 22 39 34
Social and Leisure activities 69 72 71
Other regular living costs 55 66
Total
535
992
843

8. Student Perspectives
39% of students estimated that their family household gross annual income was less than the average industrial wage, approximately €35,000 (Eurostudent survey 2013)
The level of financial difficulty increases in line with lower income levels. Overall approximately 18% of students indicated that they are in serious financial difficulty.
25% for students from families whose household family income is between 20,000-35,0000,

9. Regional gaps widen as London grows faster
Source: UCAS Analysis Report (2015) UK application rates by country, region, constituency, sex, age and background

10. Decline in Part-time undergraduate UK and EU entrants in England

11. Looking ahead Removal of student number controls
Building on National Networks for Collaborative Outreach (NNCOs)
Changes in postgraduate financial support
Demographic change
2015 Election and Brexit

12. Research Question
What measures are necessary to further advance the access to higher education of underprivileged groups?
Methodology: Thematic Content analysis
Data source: publicly available reports from UK and Brazil
Theme one: activities/initiatives/practices taken to improve
Theme two: Effectiveness of activities/initiatives/practices taken

13. Why thematic content analysis
Information collected through official reports is free to use and easy to access.
Permission to access to data required in the proposed context is highly restricted for conducting a survey.
This method of data collection and data preparation for statistical analysis is supported by the previous studies (e.g., Montabon, et al., 2007; Hofer, et al., 2012; Albino, et al., 2012)

14. Thank You Questions/Comments a.Upadhyay@brighton.ac.uk @aarbind