By Professor Sir Pete Downes, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of Dundee
TODAY we welcome dozens of new students to the University of Dundee, the latest group to have graduated from our Summer School. The class of 2017 is the 25th cohort who faced missing out on higher education were it were not for our flagship widening access scheme. More than 2,000 summer school students over the past quarter-century have gone on to take a full place at the university, demonstrating that exam results are not necessarily markers of academic potential.
This is not about dumbing down but recognising that some people are advantaged by upbringing. Others with the same academic potential may not enjoy the same privileges so we need to find other ways of identifying and supporting them.
Each student has their own reasons for coming to summer school. Our alumni includes carers and the care-experienced, young mothers, former gang members and ex-professional footballers. They are now politicians, teachers, social workers, engineers, designers, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. The enormous contribution they now make to society is something we would all have missed out on.
In recent years, there have been moves within the Scottish higher education sector to centralise summer school activity on a single site, but people are much less likely to attend summer school if it involves a 50-mile commute or finding accommodation for the duration of the course. Summer schools are by their very nature tailored to the needs of students in a particular region. Our students are often the first in their family to apply to university and to take them away from support networks would be a serious mistake.
Increasingly, our intake is recruited from applicants identified as likely to fall short of entry requirements but whose backgrounds suggest there may be circumstances depressing academic performance. We also work with schools where a large number of students come from areas with high level of deprivation. This interventionist approach has seen us make great strides in widening access.
But there is much more work ahead of us if we are to fully level the playing field, not just in terms of admissions but also the journey through university and beyond.
Despite very good initial progression rates, the drop-out rate for widening access students steadily increases from second year onwards. Students from more deprived backgrounds may work more hours in a part-time job and are less likely to have a “lifeline” in the event of unexpected circumstances. For some students, losing a job or falling behind in their rent is a short-term difficulty their parents can help them through. For others it’s a full-blown crisis that can impact on their entire future. We have to look more at the factors driving drop-out rates among this group, design interventions to support them and direct additional resources to help people through these later phases.
We cannot pretend disadvantage stops the second students walk on to campus. It lingers well beyond their studies as the ability to find graduate-level jobs depends not just on their degree and the university they got it from but from the networks they build, either through family connections or through unpaid work that less privileged students often find it harder to commit to. We have much still to do but identifying potential and helping those that need it to overcome the barriers to higher education is a vital first step. The students graduating from Summer School should feel very proud of what they have achieved.
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