EUROPE: Access and quality are not mutually exclusive

It is true that governments in many developed countries see the need to increase higher education attainment rates, as William Patrick Leonard points out. And he is certainly sadly correct to highlight that increasing student numbers is often seen as a purely fiscal measure. But his arguments about the need to define the potential of learners better, however true that might be in certain cases, do not convince me that changes are needed in our higher education system.

The system has had to adapt rapidly to globalisation and the increased role of market economics in the running of higher education institutions. Future students are being told that higher education yields the same economic benefits as it did several decades ago or that it is a highway to a secure life. And thus expectations are being driven up, leading students to accept high debt levels resulting from the normalisation of higher education.

The personal (economic) benefit is to a degree dependent on the state of a country's economy or the societal values being nurtured in its education system and beyond.

But despite all the negative talk, it is clear that if rapid economic development is to continue, we need more highly educated people and that many developed countries are, for example, already falling behind in the numbers of engineers they need to develop.

This means that we should prioritise the actual competencies that students gain from higher education, which will help them stay in employment and benefit society in the long term.

There is thus a broad argument for supporting investment in higher education because of the societal gains it offers. I would therefore argue that increasing the number of people aspiring to a qualification is not the core of the problem. Rather, it is the lack of an adequate response from policy-makers and universities to the issue of maintaining standards while engaging more learners.

Furthermore, a crucial argument for widening participation is the empowering role that higher education plays. It would be wrong to advocate some form of exact way of measuring the potential of those who might be suited to be students as sometimes this only emerges when certain conditions are met. And that cannot happen if some people are excluded.

We should also keep in mind that in a number of countries, a stratification of higher education institutions has emerged in which the older, traditional institutions that are more prestigious are filled with students who were almost guaranteed a place in higher education due to their socio-economic or cultural standing in society.

But these institutions don't always do as much in transforming and creating potential in individual learners as many other institutions that actively engage students who mainly come from different backgrounds.

So the question quickly becomes one about what the mission of educators and higher education is and the added value they confer on society as a whole. And in this, we should bear in mind that much of the added value will be difficult to measure.

But one could say that educating those who are the first in their family to go into higher education is an accomplishment in itself. Elite institutions may also benefit from the potential that widening participation measures tap into.

So how do we both widen participation and maintain the quality of higher education?

It boils down to what we learn, why we learn it, and how we best do that - these are questions which are not at the forefront when only economic arguments for higher education are used by students, families, employers or politicians.

Thus the situation described by Leonard should rather be seen as a perverse reaction that is triggered by a lack of incentives for people to stay in higher education.

Unemployment and high dropout rates should not be seen as unintended consequences of a failure to appropriately meet an increased demand for higher education, because unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is still much lower for people with a higher education qualification.

Indeed it is not only institutional support, as Catherine Montgomery writes, but the holistic system of learning that enables people to become engaged in higher education. We need to find out more about why people are not incentivised to benefit from higher education, and why students drop out.

It's not necessarily about throwing more financial resources at higher education but about bringing people together. And fortunately, in a world where 'facebooking' has become a verb, this is much easier to achieve than ever before. Thus the reaction towards increasing numbers of learners should be a focus on their autonomy as individuals and learners.

We should talk more about the teaching methodology we use, the flexibility of our curricula and the changes that need to be made to support widening participation. In one of our projects in the European Students' Union we rolled out a student-centred learning concept based on research in the area that highlights some key issues in relation to this.

One of the most important issues that emerged about the effectiveness of learning is that different individuals from different backgrounds learn and engage in higher education in different ways.

However, often the environment in higher education institutions or the structure of the curriculum conform to the notion of students being essentially the same as they were 30 years ago, and are blind to diversity. This means that higher education is less effective than it could be.

So, enrolling more students but failing to adapt to a more diverse student body simply shows that higher education institutions have not planned properly for widening participation and is not necessarily an argument for building a more selective system. The answer to the issues raised by Leonard lies in changing our teaching methodology rather than in trying to avoid change by locking universities' doors.

One interesting example that has driven change in Europe is the increase in student mobility. Many institutions and student organisations have had to adapt and build new support systems after realising that they could not accept international students without providing specific support or counselling to help them overcome the difficulties of cultural adjustment.

And with many surveys and research confirming that international experience is more valued than ever, this will also help to break traditional understandings of learning in a higher education context.

It will also require us to reconfigure our mindset to understand that failure is an opportunity to learn. But, as Montgomery cleverly points out, obstacles often come as a result of the gaps between disciplines and failure can be averted by the provision of the right learning environment.

Resources in institutions should thus be weighted heavily towards making students more autonomous at the beginning of their studies and that would save money in the long term. In the end, it is a question of how we make the best use of learning for every individual.

* Allan Päll is Chair of the European Students' Union.