Trends in Higher Education Participation in Scotland |
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| Authors: | Lindsay Paterson |
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| Institution: | Moray House Institute of Education, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh |
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| Abstract: | Scottish higher education has expanded and diversified in the last two decades. Most notably, compared to the early 1980s, participation in the mid-1990s has risen disproportionately among people aged over 21, people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, women, and (probably) minority ethnic groups. Students are more likely to move away from their home region on entering undergraduate courses, although they are not much more likely than before to leave Scotland altogether. Although participation from Scotland generally has risen more rapidly than participation from elsewhere in the UK generally, at some Scottish institutions the proportion of undergraduates coming from outside Scotland is growing. The system as a whole is not becoming markedly more part-time, although there has been a rise in the very small proportion of people who are studying for first degrees part-time (as opposed to HNDs etc). The share of higher education taking place in further education colleges has grown sharply, but nearly all of that has been for HNDs etc rather than degrees. The expansion has been driven partly by general social change (including the intergenerational effects of previous educational expansion), partly by special entrance schemes to encourage students from social backgrounds that have not in the past been strongly associated with entering higher education, and partly by government policy. These pressures will continue, and will probably be reinforced by the imminent reform of post-16 assessment and curriculum in Scotland, producing for the educational stage immediately preceding higher education for most students a unified framework embracing both academic and vocational courses. |
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