The Black Student Experience in Higher Education
Dr Gurnam Singh, Principal Lecturer in Social Work,
Co-Director Applied Research Group in Social Inclusion and
National Teaching Fellow (2009)
email g.singh@coventry.ac.uk
Key note at the:
‘Race Equality in HE: Achievements,
Future Challenges and Possible Solutions’
conference
St Ann’s College,
Oxford University.
11.3.11
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Can I begin by thanking Leyla Okhai for organising this important historic event. I feel
particularly honoured to have been asked to share my thoughts about the question of ‘race’
equality in Higher Education (HE).
In thinking about my presentation, and being conscious of being at an institution which,
along with its younger sister (or should it be brother) institution approximately 70 miles due
East, has become something of a punch bag when it comes to questions of snobbery and
elitism, I was determined not to make any cheap shots along the lines of the Laura Spence
affair in 1999 and Gordon Browns assertion that this was scandalous, or the more recent
observations made by the Labour MP and former minister for Higher Education David
Lammy, in the Guardian of 6th Dec 2010 titled ‘The Oxbridge Whitewash’ in which he alleged
that there was widespread nepotism operating at Oxbridge to the detriment of students
from black, working class and northern backgrounds.
The other cliché about Oxford is to liken it to an educational dinosaur. Of course this is a
completely false comparison, for dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years and
Oxford is alive and kicking. The major causes of extinction in the natural world where
habitats change quicker than the capacity for the organism to adapt/evolve. The fact that
Oxford, the oldest university in the world still remains at the top of the ‘food chain’ is clear
evidence of its capacity to change, albeit in a somewhat cautious manner.
Over the centuries Oxford has both shaped and reflected the prevailing world view, but just
as women on the misplaced view that higher education was not relevant to their role in
society were not allowed to take degrees at the University until 1920, today in the 21 st
Century in the post colonial post industrial period, universities like Oxford face another
challenge. In a age where the idea mass as opposed to an elite higher education system,
where ideologies of inherent inferiority human beings based on such things as ‘race’, class,
gender, disability, age and so are no longer tenable, both morally and legally, our so called
‘elite institutions’ once again are faced with the necessity adapt. Putting aside the moral
arguments, if the so called Russell Group wants to maintain their world class status then, on
the presumption that intellectual potential is broadly evenly distributed amongst the whole
population, it is seems foolish to only fish for talent restricted to a small pool of 18 year
old’s taken from the ‘traditional’ recruiting grounds.
Initially it was suggested to me by Leyla that I should focus my talk on the question ‘does
meritocracy exist in Higher Education?’ As you can see from the programme, I declined; not
because the question of meritocracy is not important, but because I didn’t think that I would
be able in the format of a keynote do justice to it. Let me explain. In many ways the
question of meritocracy constitutes a key organising principle of the European
Enlightenment which sought to enunciate two linked cardinal principles; first, the idea that
life chances should not be ‘accidents of birth’ and second that mass and not selective or
elite participation in education was the hallmark of modern democratic societies.
Founded on the principles of reason, justice and the idea of the common public sphere
(Melton, 2001), enlightenment scholars sought to critique and challenge the territory that
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was the sole preserve of state and religious authorities. It was a period of slaying sacred
cows and a reassessment of what it was meant to be human. One of the most influential of
all thinkers, John Locke, who was associated with Christ Church College here at Oxford,
through his theory of the consciousness which proposed that the human mind was a blank
slate or ‘tabla rasa’, and by doing so he asserted that human ontology was not subject to
innate ideas and that the possession of knowledge was the product of lived experience.
Leading to the assertion, later to be reflected in the American Declaration of Independence,
that ‘men [sic] are created equal’, we can see this idea giving birth a whole new way of
viewing human worth and potential.
It was this very idea of the blank slate that was later to inspire the work of the radical
behaviourist John Watson captured in his contention that if her were given ‘a dozen healthy
infants, well-formed, and [his] own specified world to bring them up in [he would]
guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might
select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief,
regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his
ancestors.”(Watson, 1930)
So whilst the enlightenment offered the tantalising possibility of a meritocratic society, the
reality is somewhat different. The belief that we are all equal at birth is no guarantor of
equality of outcome, which most reasonable people now accept is determined by a wide
range of social, economic and cultural factors. As the overwhelming evidence states, the
‘more black and working class one is the more likely one is to end up in low prestigious
institutions and the more white and middle class one is the reverse is the case (HEFCE,
2010), a state of affairs that is dramatically illustrated with the often quoted statistic that
there are more Black students at London Metropolitan university than the entire Russell
Group. And once in the institutions, the disparities continue, with BME students up to 3
times less likely to get a first. And up to 2 times less likely to get a 2:1
So, in focussing my talk more directly on the Black Student experience of HE, I am
specifically seeking to do two things: first to problematise current approaches to diversity in
higher education and second to offer some means of responding to the issue BME
participation and attainment in HE, something that has been the focus of my research for
some years.
In terms of the question of diversity, my basic premise is that the notion of ‘diversity’, as it
currently deployed in educational and other public - and increasingly private sector institutions, has singularly failed to address the issue of institutional and structural
discrimination and disadvantage. That, as a consequence of complex and contradictory
forces, associated with, amongst other things, postmodernist (diversity as ‘inherently good’)
and neo-liberal conceptions (diversity as fetish and commodity), struggles for and over
diversity have been stripped of their historical, material and emancipatory thrust.
If I were to conduct a poll of people in this audience on the proposition that celebrating
diversity was a good thing, most would agree! We are all self evidently diverse and living in a
world where everybody looks and behaves like oneself conjures a somewhat dystopian
hellish image. So why you might think am I wanting to problematise the idea of diversity in
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Higher Education, which seems like a self evidently positive and desirable thing to celebrate.
Well, the issue isn’t so much about the value of celebrating diversity per say but about how
the term is understood and how can policies built around diversity address the deeper
questions related to structural inequalities, racism and oppression.
Whilst it would be disingenuous to suggest all advocates of diversity policies in universities
sing from the same hymn sheet, there is good reason to believe that ‘diversity’ enters higher
education less through an emancipatory imperative, reflected perhaps most clearly in the
political discourse of anti-racist education, and more via the neo-liberal marketisation
agenda that has taken such a stranglehold on Higher Education. Specifically in Education,
diversity discourses have been articulated in terms of ‘widening participation’ and
‘internationalisation’, which in turn are justified in relation to neo-liberal imperatives of ‘the
market’, ‘economic competitiveness’ and ‘economic globalisation’ (Canaan and Shumar,
2008)
Specifically, the idea of diversity has become taken up by universities in two distinct ways,
to ‘manage diversity’, and/or turn diversity into a commodity, a marketing tool to maximise
market share. Ahmed (2007) argues such strategies ‘work to individuate difference and to
conceal the continuation of systematic inequalities within and between universities. She
illustrates this point by pointing out how diversity becomes synonymous with certain
conceptions of a university. On the one hand we have the ‘widening participation’ university
for whom the appeal to diversity becomes a kind of ‘race to the bottom’, a means to
ensuring they meet their recruitment targets; conversely, for the ‘elite’ the appeal to
diversity becomes associated with their claims to be truly global institutions and ‘diversity
becomes a means by which certain others, who are ‘global citizens’, can be appealed to. In
short, whether it is a race to the bottom or top, diversity becomes an instrument or
technique not only for attracting people to the university, but also for dealing with
differences within the lived environment of the university. Doing diversity here is not
associated with challenging disadvantage, but doing business for different kinds of
neoliberal universities. In this sense, diversity has become instrumental in masking arguably
the most significant axis of diversity, namely, that of class and wealth (Michaels, 2006).
If one looks more directly at the black student experience of HE, it would be wrong to
suggest that everything is bad; there are some good news stories to tell, both at an
institutional and individual level. So, whilst, as noted earlier, there are some significant
variation across the HE sector as a whole and amongst different ethnic groups, broadly
speaking successive government policies aimed at expanding HE and widening participation
over the past 20 years have been hugely successful. From the turn of the century, BME
students were reported to comprise 16% of the undergraduate population in England as
opposed to 9% of the working population (Connor et al., 2004). However, if the headline
figures look promising, when one looks at the experience of BME students within HE, both
subjective and objective measures uncover some worrying evidence.
Although unequal patterns of attainment between BME groups and White students were
pointed out in the late 1990’s by Bhattacharyya et al. (2003), up until recent times higher
education (HE) in the UK has been relatively immune from scrutiny regarding the racial and
ethnic dynamics of universities which, as a result have, by and large, been concealed (Deem
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et al. 2005; Law et al., 2004). Whilst such a state of affairs was politically sustainable under
conditions where HE was only accessed by a small and largely privileged section of the
population, under government policies of expansion, fair access and widening participation
(DfES, 2003), things have dramatically changed. As a consequence of greater scrutiny
through such bodies as the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE), tighter statutory
requirements brought about as a consequence of the Race Relations Amendment Act
(2000), and through various empirical studies, we now have an increasing body of evidence
uncovering the experiences of BME students in HE.
The evidence indicates that BME students face inequality at all stages of the HE experience:
they are less likely to be satisfied with their student experience; more likely to leave early;
and are less likely to gain a good honours degree (1st or 2:1) (Connor et al., 2003 and 2004).
More so, Connor et al also argue that progression to employment may not be as successful
or straight forward for BME graduates. In terms of this last point on degree attainment,
there is clear evidence that students from certain BME groups under-perform on a range of
measures compared to White students (Broecke and Nicholls, 2007; Higher Education
Academy/Equality Challenge Unit Final Report, 2008).
The picture is complex and the reasons why the degree attainment gap exists for any
individual are varied (e.g. gender, disability, social deprivation, previous family educational
experiences of HE, type of institution and whether student is home or campus based).
Nonetheless, there is a growing body of evidence that confirms that ‘even after controlling
for the majority of factors which we would expect to have an impact on attainment, being
from a minority ethnic community…is still statistically significant in explaining final
attainment’ (Broecke and Nichols, 2007:3).
The cause for this statistically significant attainment gap is yet to be fully understood,
although the possible role of racism is one factor that has in recent years been given
increasing significance (Turney et al. 2002; Back, 2004). Les Back in a book entitled
Institutional Racism in Higher Education suggests that the self concept that ‘White’
academics align themselves to the ‘liberal minded rational intellectuals’, coupled with a
notion that racism is the product of small minded, morally degenerate hateful individuals, is
the perfect formula for locating the problem somewhere else. He goes on to argue that
there is a need for a shift in mind set to an acknowledgement that our capacity to reason is
never absolute and ‘that racism has damaged reason, damaged academic and civic
freedoms and damaged the project of education itself’ (Back, 2004 p5).
Hence, whilst it is not unreasonable to take pride in the broadly free, open and tolerant
ethos that HE aspires to, at the same time there needs to be recognition that, like other
institutions, universities are not immune from institutional racism. In terms of policy
development, particularly over the past 10 years the literature suggests an important shift
away from a defensive posture associated with fulfilling legislative and regulative
requirements, to more proactive responses aimed at developing pedagogical strategies for
addressing BME student attainment.
The publication of the Macpherson report in 1999 into the death of Stephen Lawrence,
coupled with the broader widening participation agenda set in train earlier, not only
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significantly raised the profile of race equality in HE, but also for the first time made it a
legal requirement for universities to look at and publish statistics on BME student
attainment. My own research on the published research suggests that whilst the more
targeted initiatives stemming from the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 initially had
an impact, it is still broadly the case, and particularly so in the Russell Group, that many
universities either remain in a state of denial about the BME attainment gap, or tend to
reduce the issue to one of celebrating and managing diversity and student deficit models
where in effect their perceived lack of ability is seen as the primary cause for their relative
lower attainment (Turney et al., 2002; Jones and Thomas, 2005; Jacobs et al., 2007; Ahmed,
2007).
But it would be wrong to simply blame universities for the problem – there is, for instance
much evidence suggesting that pre-university attainment of many groups within the BME
categorisation does have some bearing on subsequent performance at HE (Gorard et al.
2006; Broecke and Nicholls 2007; Richardson, 2008; Morrice, 2009). Yet, however appealing
it might be to identify one single major cause that could explain the BME attainment gap, a
more plausible explanation would lead to a complex range of differently connected factors
such as; previous educational experiences, curriculum content and design, teaching learning
and assessment approaches, the learning environment and direct and indirect racism are all
at play (Bird, 1999; Turney et al. 2002; Back, 2004; Tolley and Rundle, 2006; NUS, 2011).
So, given the evidence, the question remains, what can be done to address the issues? First
of all one needs to recognise that different institutions, departments and courses have
different priorities; for some the issue is recruitment, whilst for others it is about retention
and success. I would just like to end by offering a selection of some practical steps which
could be taken – these are drawn from a systematic review of the literature which I recently
undertook for the HEA which should be published very soon (Singh, 2011):
A: Teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment.
1. Every effort must be made to avoid pathologising lower attainment and therefore it
is important to focus on strategies for success and not reasons for failure when
seeking to enable students to improve on their performance.
2. In an increasingly globalised higher education system, for the benefit of ‘home’ and
‘international students’, the academic curriculum needs to be genuinely
international in relation to content.
3. Course materials and case studies should seek to represent ‘non-western’ minorities
in a balanced way and not just in the context of social problems or as victims.
4. Diverse and creative assessment strategies should be developed although all existing
and new strategies should be reviewed and changed to avoid/minimise bias.
B: Leadership and management.
1. Institutions, irrespective of where they are located, need to work to establish
meaningful and sustained links and partnerships with BME communities and
organisations at a local, regional and in some instances, national and international
level.
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2. The institutional human resources strategy in terms of recruitment, selection,
retention and development should be informed by the need to develop a culturally
diverse and competent workforce.
3. The university registry should establish an effective system to generate data in
relation to ethnicity and attainment that can be drilled down to different levels
4. Universities need to challenge campus racism, actively discourage segregation and
encourage cohesion amongst students through a range of reactive and proactive
actions.
5. Whilst it is important to reflect diversity in all university publicity material, care
should be taken to ensure that external representation of diversity and harmony is a
true reflection of the internal culture and experience of students.
6. Elite universities need to become more/welcoming and open to students who may
not have succeeded in education first time round.
C: Student support services
1. Whilst the core of university life should be based on a secular ideal, given that for
significant numbers of students faith and spirituality are important dimensions of
their lives, universities should proactively recognise and accommodate these
students’ needs.
2. Whilst BME students’ particular needs, as learners, should be addressed, this should
be done in a non-stigmatising way that does not reinforce a ‘deficit model’.
3. Mentoring schemes and positive role models can be very effective, but as with the
point above, these should be developed in ways that do not end up reinforcing a
deficit model and/or the segregation of BME students.
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