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UCAS Conference 2024 - Access All Areas

Date and location
This event has now finished

Is Higher Education massification unfinished business?

Tuesday 21 May 2024 11:55 - 12:35
Open to all
Open to all

Summary

Over the last 25 years, the number of undergraduates studying in our universities has increased by a third. Expanding our higher education system has given more people access to the undeniable benefits a degree affords: higher earnings, better jobs, healthier lives, and greater civic engagement. At the same time, expansion has meant distributing the benefit more equitably. But with young people from the most advantaged postcodes still twice as likely to go, is massification unfinished business? And how do we continue our job against the barrage of calls that too many people go to university? And how do we respond to those decrying the quality of the education we provide for those that do come through our doors? Can we do more to help prospective students and others better understand what quality means, and what mechanisms there are to protect them,  and what do we owe the students of the future?