扩大参与:英国高等教育规模增长的政策选择

Widening Participation Policy Options for Growing the Size of UK Higher Education

二战后,高等教育规模已经成为制约英国社会发展的巨大障碍,政府期望通过推动高等教育规模增长来破解社会发展难题,使得高等教育更好地满足社会发展需要。《罗宾斯报告》开启了通过机构扩张推动高等教育规模增长的路径,但受到英国社会传统和文化的影响,机构扩张之路陷入困境。《雷弗休姆报告》关注到高等教育规模增长中的学生群体结构性失衡问题,提出了通过扩大高等教育参与解决问题的思路。随着《迪尔英报告》的出台,扩大参与政策受到政府重视并逐渐完善。进入21世纪,在政府政策的持续推进下,英国扩大参与取得了一定成效,女性、成年、少数族裔、来自社会下层等不同群体的学生参与率均有提升。但由于财政困境、提高学费标准、学生参与成本提高、政府限制招生以及就业市场情况不佳等原因,扩大参与仍面临挑战。英国经验在一定程度上说明,高等教育规模增长的路径选择具有很强的本土性特征。

After the Second World W ar,the scale of higher education in the United Kingdom has become a huge obstacle to social development,and the government expects to crack the social development problem by promoting the growth of higher education scale so that higher education can better meet the needs of social development.The Robbins Report opened the path of promoting the growth of higher education scale through institutional expansion but influenced by the tradition and culture of the British society,the path of institutional expansion is in trouble.The Levehulerm Report paid attention to the structural imbalance of student groups in the growth of higher education and put forward the idea of solving the problem by expanding participation in higher education.With the introduction of the Dearing Report,the policy of expanding participation has been taken seriously by the government and gradually improved.In the 21st century,under the continuous promotion of government policies,the UK has achieved some success in widening participation,and the participation rates of different groups such as women,adults,ethnic minorities,and students from the lower strata of society have all increased.However,widening participation still faces challenges due to financial difficulties,higher tuition fee rates,higher costs of student participation,government restrictions on enrolment,and poor job market conditions.The British experience illustrates,to some extent,that the choice of pathways for growth in the scale of tertiary education is strongly home-grown in character.