Improving the Degree Attainment of Black and Minority Ethnic Students
UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE
Improving the Degree Attainment of Black and Minority Ethnic Students
Summit B Programme: Reflective Paper
1. Abstract of work being undertaken
Mirroring trends across the HE sector over the past few years, annual institutional data has been indicating that a significantly lower proportion of BME students at the University of Bedfordshire gain good degrees (firsts and upper seconds) in comparison with White students. For example, data from the Undergraduate Scheme Report (2007/08) indicated that whilst 57% of White students gained good degrees the performance of other groupings was significantly lower: e.g. Chinese 33%; Black 37%; and, Asian 41%. An initial examination indicated that the reasons for this were not simply due to ethnicity but are complicated by other factors such as prior educational attainment, age, family commitments and subject studied.
By unpacking institutional data to explore further the factors which explain the difference in attainment, the work being taken in the Summit B Programme aimed to give the University a greater understanding of the complexity surrounding differential attainment and progression. At the time of submitting the report, the work planned for the Summit Programme phase is one month from completion, thus this report will be less about outcomes than charting the ‘journey travelled’ to date.
Following initial scoping of the project and determining what was feasible within the Summit B Programme’s timeframe, our work has focused upon one major research project: ‘Eyes on the Prize’. The project has two key features: collecting qualitative data to unpack reasons for differential attainment; and a focus on understanding success stories that lead some BME students to achieve a first class degree classification. The research is designed to provide fresh insights into what generates high attainment and will, we hope, challenge representations of minority ethnic undergraduates as simply ‘failing’ or ‘problem’ students.
A literature review informed the construction of question areas for the data collection phase around personal, institutional, and contextual contributors to success. At the time of this report, discussion groups have been held with current students (Yr 2 and Yr 3 students) and interviews are being conducted with some of our alumni who graduated with 1st class honours in 2008 and 2009. The planned February 2010 completion of this phase of the project was extended to the end of April to ensure that the right resources and logistics were in place to gather reliable data. The report to be produced at this time will summarise key findings and recommendations. An action plan will inform future developments and any strategies in terms of engaging staff and students in discussions and/or actions around the experience of BME students. When starting off on the Summit B Programme the investigation of degree attainment differentials and BME students was perceived as a longer term venture, dove-tailing with the longer-term goals of the University of Bedfordshire’s Summit A Programme (Developing Inclusivity in Learning and Teaching).
2. Institutional context and history/rationale for initiative
One of the objectives in the University of Bedfordshire’s corporate plan ‘New Futures’ is: ‘to enhance the opportunities to access higher education for all those able to benefit’ with a commitment to widening participation and enabling all its students to maximise their potential. The University’s Education strategy ‘Transformational Education’ (2008-2013)[1] talks of our Access mission leading ‘to diversity in our student body in terms of aspirations, maturity, nationality, gender, ethnicity, prior attainment, prior study, mode and location of study’. The University of Bedfordshire is certainly characterised by its diverse student population (ca 20,000 students with 100+ countries represented); 63% female; 5% with a declared disability; and, its students are often mature with a diversity of prior attainments. Its diverse student population includes a significant number of BME students[2] (47% of students classify themselves as being from ethnic backgrounds other than ‘White’).
Valuing and responding to this diversity has required work at the institutional, course and individual student level. Included in the Education Strategy are themes which ask the University to address inclusivity including: ‘Providing access to higher education for all who can benefit; improving student learning and attainment; and supporting a multi-cultural and multi-national student community’.
The ‘Expression of Interest’ call for the Summit B Programme was opportune, coinciding with an area of action from the University’s Undergraduate Scheme Report (2007/08); this action had identified the relatively poor performance of undergraduate BME students. Specifically the report identified Health, Business, Social Studies and Computing as areas where there was a significant number of BME students and where it wished to explore further the underlying problems and undertake planned interventions. A year later, breakdown of performance by ethnicity from the University’s Undergraduate Scheme Report (2008/09) shows similar wide variations in the class of degree awarded as noted in the previous year’s report. Students from BME backgrounds continue to perform less well than other groupings.
In our proposal to join the Summit B Programme we had indicated that we initially wished to gain a greater understanding of the complexity surrounding differential attainment and progression, and uncover effective practice and interventions. Whilst the University had previously examined some specific under-performing groups e.g. our international Chinese students (Undergraduate Scheme Report 2006/07 – Action plan 2007/08), we had not examined BME student attainment. We indicated that we wished to have systems in place at institutional and local levels to support, intervene and monitor. A longer term aim was also to incorporate appropriate staff development, though unlikely to be achieved within the lifetime of the Summit B Programme. Thus the University of Bedfordshire specifically saw participation in the Summit B Programme as enabling us to:
1. benchmark the attainment of BME students against those in other universities by subject;
2. unpack institutional data to explore further the factors which explain the difference in attainment;
3. engage students and staff in discussions around the experience of BME students;
4. identify and implement strategies for addressing attainment issues and:
5. reflect on the outcomes and identify areas for further work.
The remainder of this report reflects upon our progress in the points above. From the outset, we acknowledged that this Summit Programme work was short-term and would be continued beyond the life of the Academy/ECU programme.
3. Strategy
A small core team was established, co-ordinated by the University’s Teaching and Learning Directorate to ensure that the outcomes would feed into teaching and learning processes and policies more widely. The core team initially comprised the University’s Associate Director of Teaching and Learning, the University’s Equality and Diversity Officer, and, a Head of Department and a Principal Lecturer from the Department of Applied Social Studies. Two members of the core team are also involved in the University’s other HEA Summit Programme (Developing Inclusive Learning and Teaching). A research assistant joined the core team in the last six months of the project. Reports from the Director of Teaching and Learning on both Summit Programmes are presented at the University’s Equality and Diversity Committee which includes senior managers from across the University and representatives of the Students’ Union.
The first Summit B Programme developmental workshop in Birmingham made the core team highly conscious of the complexity of this whole area. We were therefore mindful of being over-ambitious and appreciated the need for realism to ensure that we accomplished something within the relative short time frame of the Summit Programme, to be followed up beyond the life of the Academy/ECU programme. Initially, we became increasingly aware that some other institutions in the Summit B Programme appeared to be much further down the line in terms of working on degree differentials and planned interventions.
Early conclusions suggested we needed to firstly focus on unpacking the factors that would actually help us to understand the difference in attainment at the University of Bedfordshire rather than aim to introduce and evaluate a particular intervention to try to improve attainment. Institutional quantitative data analysis clearly indicated differences in degree attainment, but why did these exist? And, we kept coming back to the question: whilst some BME students performed less well than their White peers, what factors explained the outstanding trajectories of those BME students who achieved first class degree classification? The research project we designed subsequently had two key features: collecting qualitative data to really unpack reasons for differential attainment; and a focus on accentuating the positives and the success stories rather than focusing upon low attainment.
The resultant project, ‘Eyes on the prize’ aimed to determine why our BME alumni had attained first class grades and degrees, and ‘succeeded’. We wanted to determine more about their journeys and what helped them to attain, and, who influenced their progression from start through to completion of their studies. It was noteworthy that with regards to the performance of BME students in the HE sector, the overwhelming focus in education policy and practice has been on ‘underachievement’. Equally applicable in the HE context, the problem of neglecting the achieving BME student within the school context is described in the following book description: “The authors of this book take a refreshing approach to the issue of minority ethnic attainment as they examine the views, identities and educational experiences of those pupils who are undoubtedly 'achieving', but who tend to remain ignored and overlooked within popular concerns about under-achievement. By investigating the factors underpinning 'success', this ground-breaking book shows how a better understanding of high achievement can also inform our knowledge of under-achievement” (Archer and Francis, 2007,[3] Back cover).
It was planned that the outcomes of the Eyes on the Prize project would inform the nature of any action to be targeted at current BME student groups post our participation in the Summit Programme.
4. Activities completed (or currently in progress)
4.1 Preparation for the ‘Eyes of the Tiger’ project
The core team met on a regular basis to progress the project, creating a timeline for the project which we hoped to complete by the time of the February 2010 reflective report deadline along with key questions. Further phases were also planned beyond the duration of the project. The University’s Planning Department were able to identify students who had achieved 1st class honours awards and provided further statistics and our Alumni Office were happy to be involved in providing contact details. However, before any data collection, it became apparent that we needed to complete a literature review on the attainment of BME students to help inform the data collection phase.
4.2 Phase One: Literature Review outcomes [August-September 2009]
A Research Assistant was employed and commissioned to conduct the literature review that examined research evidence that may have a bearing on the components of academic success for BME (home) undergraduate students. The review was to centre upon: degree classification; research literature that clarified how undergraduate students achieved the highest degree classification; research literature that focused on BME students who had achieved a 1st (or equivalent), in the UK, America, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else where English is the first language; and, research that identified personal, institutional, and contextual contributors to success in those terms.
The first criterion by which studies were sorted was based on whether they dealt with attainment as a problem or a success; a large proportion of the literature on BME students was found to focus upon the relative lack of attainment. The resultant 5,000 word literature review report, confirmed that while the focus in much of the existing research was on differential achievements, particularly with white students doing better than their BME counterparts, little research existed that explored the high achievements of BME students in HE, or the factors that may contribute to that high achievement. Most importantly, though there were some studies analysing large scale datasets in relation to the differentials in the award of degree classification by ethnicity, gender, subject or study method, there was very little of substance that looked at the ‘why’ associated with the ‘what’ of differential achievements. Equally, qualitative literature that explored effectively and deeply the stories behind the statistics derived from analysis of large scale data, was patchy and speculative. So in all, no stories illuminated the different dimensions of success for BME students whether in the UK or abroad.
Given the paucity of specific qualitative and quantitative research on high achieving BME students, the range of research studies considered was widened to include literature on high attainment for all students, and in some instances for other sub-groups defined by gender or age, in order to clarify what was known about students (and consequently some categories of students) who manage to achieve highly at undergraduate level. In doing so, a map of interacting factors was identified, and arranged into three domains of influence, namely the personal, institutional and contextual. In broad terms, these three domains remained only partially complete, as the studies under consideration tended to focus on selective variables within each domain. The findings therefore did not offer predictability by which neat lines of cause and effect could be drawn in designing measures to boost and sustain the high achievement in BME students. Yet they offered some modest insight into the ways some factors within and between domains may influence some people some of the time in achieving the highest levels of degree classification within a Higher Education context.
The personal domain of influence encompasses those characteristics that have been used to statistically map patterns in the attainment of all undergraduate students, not just BME students. Two personal characteristics that featured prominently in the literature were age and gender. Analysis of large scale datasets, and of individual institution datasets suggested that mature students tended to perform better than those students aged under 21. Some research suggested that older students were more likely to be guided towards study by intrinsic motivations such as a love of learning, and as a consequence have more successful study habits. Further analysis of patterns generated by gender suggested two predominant trends; firstly, that women tended to average a higher classification of degree than men and secondly that men were more likely to get first class or third class classifications. In relation to the first trend, the better performance of women was demonstrated as correlating with their higher prior entry qualifications, and was also related to women having a higher intrinsic motivation towards learning and consequently more successful study habits. The greater attainment by men of first and third class degrees was explained through the tendency of men and women to study different subjects, with men more likely to take courses in science and maths related disciplines where right and wrong answers are more easily discerned and where therefore more first class and third class degrees are awarded.