This week I’ve been reading the last 7 years worth of equality, diversity and inclusion reports for UAL. I was perhaps naively, expecting to see some sort of significant change over the years… a huge difference in the demographic of the student populations across each arm of UAL.
What I didn’t expect to see was barely any change, especially in the numbers of students who come from what are classed as lower income areas and those who are considered working class. Whilst there has been a small increase, UAL are still below the targets that they have set for themselves and CSM has the lowest number of students from working class backgrounds out of all the colleges that form UAL. Of the 14,760 undergraduate students across UAL, only 35% of home undergraduate students come from the working classes. At Central Saint Martins only 28% of home undergraduate students are from working class backgrounds (around 4132 students), compared to 40% at LCC.
These statistics aren’t broken down into genders so I have emailed the author of the most recent report, asking if by any chance this was a data point that he had collected but wasn’t considered pertinent to the report overall. I am curious as to whether there are more female, male or non binary students from the working classes… and if anyone actually knows! The fact that the data hasn’t been disaggregated is very interesting in and of itself – we don’t know how many students come from what is considered to be a less privileged background and have dependants, or how many are working almost full time hours to be able to attend university. I feel like there is some data missing and the fact that it possibly hasn’t been collected is interesting. Why was it not considered important to split this data into genders or break it down even further?
Another problem I noticed with these reports is that they only cover undergraduate students. I have been unable to find similar reports for postgraduate students which I am finding frustrating. After talking to Zuleika, I am reminded that it is often assumed that master’s students are well off financially, because of how expensive the courses are. Of course, assumptions are often incorrect but I wonder if this is why no data was collected for postgraduate students. If so, I think it is irresponsible for a large university such as UAL to make such a sweeping assumption.
I have been in touch with the SU at UAL and received an email pointing me in the direction of the OFS Action and Participation Plan, which again is only targeting undergraduate students. I suppose that by trying to get a more diverse undergraduate student body one could expect them to carry on to postgraduate study. However I feel that this is again assuming something without providing data to back it up.
____________________________________
*A few weeks later*
I have come across a report by The Office for Students which has the most recent data for the demographic of students at English universities. The socio-economic background of students is only taken account for those students 21 and under, and yet again there is no data around the socio-economic background of postgraduate students. The Office for Students report pointed me in the direction of HESA, who collect all sorts of data for university students within the UK.
I found this table very interesting. It breaks down the socio-economic background that undergraduate students are entering higher education from. In the context of my research, I would consider working class to encompass semi-routine occupations, routine occupations and never worked/long term unemployed. Overall, the data hasn’t changed much over the last 5 years, for any of these socio-economic backgrounds. To me, this indicates that nothing is changing within higher education, particularly within undergraduate study. I have no data around postgraduate study so I can’t speak to if anything is changing there.
References:
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb262/figure-6
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/79a7bb57-83cf-4c50-a358-6bcfe80f165c/ofs2022_29.pdf
https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/144474/190206_EDI-Report-2018.pdf
https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/40630/UAL-Equality-and-Diversity-Progress-Report-2015-FINAL.pdfPosted on