Missing the Target – the Great Mistake of Canceling the AimHigher Program

Missing the Target – the Great Mistake of Cancelling the AimHigher Program

Andrew M. Boggs

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“Spending Freely on Research, Canada Reverses Brain Drain”, 20 February 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Spending-Freely-on-Research/126425/ ) discusses the advantageous position the Canadian higher education sector is in compared to the United States. The article focuses on Canadian research funding policy since the late 1990s. New programs and funding streams have been introduced designed to attract scholars from around the world to Canadian universities and to keep Canadian rising stars in the country. These programs came toward the end of a period of national austerity as Canadian federal and provincial governments made massive cuts to public spending (including cuts to operating budgets of universities). Research funding represented a politically justifiable means of directing funds back into the higher education sector. Jennifer Lewington, the author of the article and a Canadian-based reporter on education issues, draws the conclusion that these sustained investments in university research are putting Canada in a stronger position than the United States and the United Kingdom to recruit the next generation of world-leading researchers. The likelihood of Lewington’s prediction coming true is strengthened by new visa restrictions on foreign nationals coming to the US and the UK. While Canada may not be the primary English-language destination of choice for university academic staff, it is certainly eating into the future prosperity of UK and US-based university research.

There is an equally significant policy divergence occurring between the UK and Canada in the realm of student access to higher education. The UK’s new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government conducted a Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) through the autumn of 2010. A number of programs faced the chopping block in the interest of reducing public expenditures. One of these programs was AimHigher. The AimHigher program was introduced by the Labour government in 2004 as one of the tools through which the UK would achieve its (now abandoned) goal of 50% school-leaver participation in some form of tertiary education. AimHigher funded programs, organized and offered at the local school level, included such activities as visits to university campuses, residential summer schools in universities, open days and student mentoring schemes. The programs were targeted to schools and students in disadvantaged communities to encourage and support participation in higher education. AimHigher funding will stop as of July 2011. The government has suggested that the negative impact of killing AimHigher will be ameliorated by a new National Scholarship Program (see “Aimhigher brought down by coalition axe”, Times Higher Education, 25 November 2010, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414416) and by requiring individual universities to conduct more of their own student outreach (see “How to Produce an Access Agreement for 2012-13”, Office For Fair Access, 1 March 2011, http://www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/newaccess.pdf). Unfortunately, given the funding cuts universities are to receive, it is difficult to imagine there being enough new revenue from increased student fees to fund expanded university-based student outreach efforts. This is to say nothing of the economies of scale lost when many universities are duplicating their outreach efforts versus funding coordinated, locally-based programs which work with multiple institutions.

Discussion about the elimination of AimHigher has been overshadowed by the national debate over fee levels and the cutting of teaching funding in the humanities and social sciences. This prioritization is understandable – the new fee and accompanying income-contingent loan repayment system effects those currently accessing university education. The middle class, the largest single component of the voting public, are disproportionately represented in universities. Not surprisingly, the fees (and loans) this group will be paying have come to dominate the discussion over access to higher education.

Despite the public fixation on the fees issue in the UK, research suggests that fees are not the main reason individuals from under-represented groups (such as those from lower socio-economic status families) do not attend university. Research extending back as far as the late 1980s suggests that parental encouragement is the single most important factor whether or not a child considers higher education an option (see Stager, Focus on Fees, 1989). Parental encouragement is often tied to parental achievement in higher education, but not exclusively. It is possible for children who are “first generation” university attendees to have been encouraged into higher education by parents who did not attend university themselves. More recent research has found that peer group expectation (i.e. what one’s friends’ plans are) is also a major contributing factor (see Schuetze & Slowey, “Participation and exclusion: a comparative analysis of non-traditional students and lifelong learners in higher education” (2002) for an international comparative view, and Ross Finnie, et al, “Under-Represented Groups in Postsecondary Education in Ontario: Evidence from the Youth in Transition Survey” (2011) and “Access to Postsecondary Education” (2011) for the latest Canadian research). While ability to pay fees is obviously not an insignificant aspect of access to higher to education, it is important to recognize the importance of family and peer group supports when designing policy that will be effective in attracting underrepresented groups to universities. Students have to know how to get to university before worrying about the cost. This is exactly what AimHigher was designed to address.

Canadian policy makers have embraced the above research and are investing in outreach programs designed to support and encourage primary and secondary school students living in underprivileged environments to finish high school and consider higher education. One such program is Pathways to Education. The Pathways program provides mentorship and additional academic support to secondary school students in socially disadvantaged areas of the country. It started as a community-led initiative in a depressed area of the city of Toronto. The provincial government recognized the success of the Pathways program in helping students complete secondary school and apply for higher education. The program was then expanded to other parts of Toronto and throughout the province of Ontario. Most recently, the federal government of Canada announced an expansion of the Pathways program across the country (see “Pathways to Education”, Prime Minister of Canada media release, 3 March 2011, http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=4011).

While the Pathways program does not repair pre-existing inequalities in educational or family environments it does provide academic and social supports designed to broaden students’ expectations of life after completing secondary school. It coordinates mentorship for students at risk of not completing secondary school as well as exposing students to vocational and higher education. Like AimHigher, Pathways is community-based but is supported centrally through government funding and infrastructure support (for more information on the Pathways to Education program see http://www.pathwaystoeducation.ca/about.html).

The legacy of Canada’s investment in university research during a period of cutbacks is now being born out. Canada is literally stealing leading edge academics from the countries it used to fear – the United Kingdom and the United States. This change required sustained policy and funding committed to a goal of attracting researchers to Canadian universities. Equally, if not more importantly, Canada is committed to making its higher education systems accessible. It is doing this by addressing social inequalities that go beyond the student fee debate and considers research on the issue of university access and student decision-making. And yet, just as Canada is expanding its outreach and support programs for higher education, the UK is cancelling AimHigher. It should be alarming that at the very point the UK government should be mitigating the most disastrous effects of public sector cuts, it cuts a program designed to seek out and encourage participation from those individuals most at risk of being lost to higher education. Instead public debate (including many well-intentioned academics) has focused on the price tag for those who would attend university regardless of the price. The UK needs to sort out its higher education policy priorities or it risks being left behind by Canada. Again.

(NB: A version of this post was published in University Affairs, the journal of the Association of University and Colleges of Canada, on 10 May 2011 and may be found at http://www.universityaffairs.ca/missing-the-target.aspx)