Linking access with ongoing university support

Thinking outside the regulatory box with a look at support for underrepresented students in the US and New Zealand.

Support for underrepresented students to access and succeed in higher education is a major policy question within the current UK higher education context, with increasing focus from the Office for Students (OfS) to support “getting in and getting on”. While there is an enormous amount of work already being done within the UK to support various underrepresented student groups, universities across the UK are typically driven by shared regulatory pressures and funding contexts, and access to the same sector-wide data sources. These constants lead to similar organisational structures, definitions of underrepresented student groups, and approaches to supporting underrepresented students.