文档介绍：Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the
Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Oxford: 1st-3rd April 2005
Widening participation in higher education: ‘the philosopher and the bricklayer’ revisited
David Bridges
Von Hügel Institute
St Edmund’s College Cambridge
and
Centre for Applied Research in Education
University of East Anglia
THE POLICY CONTEXT
There are two particular policy imperatives which are driving the demand in the UK and in many other parts of the world for higher levels of participation in higher education and for greater social inclusivity in such participation. The first is an economic imperative based on a view of the requirements petitiveness in a globalised knowledge economy. Thus, the UK Department for Education and Employment stated in 1997 (but see also DTI 2002, DfEE 1999 and DfES 2003) that:
Investing in learning in the twenty-first century is the equivalent of investment in the machinery and technical innovation that was essential to the first great industrial revolution. Then it was physical capital: now it is human capital. (DfEE, 1997: 5)
All of this points to increasing demand for more and more highly qualified employees and especially those furnished with the ‘higher level skills’ which a university education is expected to provide:
Skills are a key driver of productivity. The rise of the knowledge economy, in which “human capital” is seen as a factor of production, is causing increased demand for skills, particularly higher level skills. (EEDA, 2002: 8)
The second policy imperative is a social imperative rooted in some principle of justice which demands that these skills should be developed in people from all sections of munity and not just those from the white middle classes which have traditionally provided the bulk of participants in higher education. However, the White Paper on The future of higher education (DfES, 2003) argues:
Education must be a force for opportunity and social justice, not fo