Pauline Anderson - Identity and Difference in Higher Education: Outsiders Within

Pauline Anderson and Jenny Williams

Jenny Williams and Jane Abson

Louise Morley

Sue Webb

Janet Parr

Carol Thomas

Shirin Housee

Pat Green

Pam Lunn

Gayle Let her by and John Shiels

Pauline Anderson

Cecily Jones

Annecka Marshall

Pauline Anderson and Jenny Williams

The growth in participation in higher education in Britain over the past four decades has been dramatic. Over 30% of 18 year olds now participate in full-time higher education, together with a huge increase in mature and part-time students (see ). In the last decade the label mass higher education has been an appropriate one. The term encapsulates the shift from a small elite system to one that draws upon a much wider social constituency with many more institutions labelled as universities. The details of this shift are the subject of much debate (for example, see Williams, 1997) but the broad consequences of the massification of higher education are clear. Far more entrants are first generation higher education students, there had been an increase in the numbers of academics and there are continuing political and public debates over the purposes of and nature of degree level study (Morley, 1999).

For new students and staff entering this much larger and more complex system, questions arise of who are we? and why are we here? These are both personal and public questions. What it means to be a higher education student at a personal level stems from a complex interplay between public definitions (who deserves to be there), institutional structures (who is allowed in, to do what, and who pays), academic decisions on curriculum and pedagogy (how and what will be taught and by whom?) and individual aspirations and behaviours (is it for me?). For black and/or working-class staff the questioning process has been an even longer one, starting for them as students and continuing as academics. The issue of identity is, then, a crucial one in exploring and understanding the experiences of the increasing numbers of staff and students participating in higher education. In order to claim an identity, for it to be more than simply an aspiration, it has to be endorsed and validated by others (Jenkins, 1996). This endorsement is a complex, social, psychological to critically question its structures. Outsiders within are constituted as the other they are defined in opposition to the norm. Currently in higher education it is 18 year old entrants in possession of three A levels who are constructed as normal students. Other entrants, those who are older, or those who do not possess A levels, for example, are defined negatively in relation to this standard model; they are constructed as the opposite the other. Similarly, higher education has traditionally been the preserve of white, middle class, male academics. Those who do not possess these racial, class and gender identities, those who are different from the norm, are constituted as other. The chapters in this book demonstrate that the process of othering produces consequences for those so defined; it is not difference per se which is the problem but the meanings attached to difference.

The origins of the book stem from conference papers given by a group of feminist academics and researchers. A larger group of contributors was recruited subsequently. All are engaged in researching and theorising the nature of difference and with understanding the changing construction of individual and group identities within higher education. However most of the accounts here deliberately focus upon women as students and as academics. In order to foster coherence across the text, the editors formulated a series of key themes, from which authors were asked to make a selection most appropriate to their own chapter.

If we examine these key themes carefully, there are particular assumptions built into them and these consequently shape the authors contributions and the book.