WIT Press Release
Title: WIT Director welcomes new plan to broaden access to higher education
Release date: Fri, Jul 11, 2008
A new national strategy to make access to higher education in Ireland more equitable has been welcomed by Prof Kieran R Byrne, Director, Waterford Institute of Technology who has committed the Institute to continued work on developing additional access routes to the Institute's programmes.
The national strategy launched by the Higher Education Authority sets out a series of actions designed to reach the target of having 72 per cent of school-leavers entering higher education by 2020, up from the current figure of 55 per cent.
The access plan also recognises the significant under-representation of certain socio-economic groups in higher education and commits to having entry rates of 54 per cent from all socio-economic groups by 2020.
Welcoming the plan and its targets, Prof Byrne said it reflected a growing recognition that participation in higher education must be opened out far more widely than has traditionally been the case.
"While we have come a long way from the days when higher education was the sole preserve of a small elite, there is a good deal further to travel before we can truly say that access to the opportunities that higher education opens out are available to all based on merit rather than background and on talent rather than family income.
"The first step to tackling this inequity is to fully recognise and quantify it and this is done by the HEA in their new strategy document on equity of access which records a very significant disparity across different strands of society. For instance, while almost 100 per cent of school leavers coming from higher professional backgrounds go on to higher education, just 33 per cent of those from semi-skilled or unskilled manual backgrounds do so.
"As well as measures to address low rates of participation in higher education among those from less well off backgrounds, the new national strategy also commits to a doubling of the number of people with physical and sensory disabilities in higher education by 2013 while there is also a commitment to ensuring mature students (those aged 23+) will represent at least 20 per cent of full-time entrants and 27 per cent of overall entrants (full- and part-time) to higher education by 2013. In this context, it was heartening to note recently that our own Institute has 93 registered students aged 60 or over with 15 of these studying full-time."
Reviewing the Waterford Institute's own drive to widen access, Prof Byrne said this work underpins all areas of Institute activity with the Centre for Helping, Access, Retention & Teaching (CHART) team coordinating specific targeted initiatives. "We are acutely aware of the responsibility we have in the southeast to open out the world of opportunity that higher education is the gateway to. We are also very conscious that we need to think differently about how and where we deliver programmes and flexibility is the key here.
"We have a number of particular measures in place to ease the transition for learners who may be returning to formal education after a long time and may not have had a positive school experience when younger. We offer ‘taster’ programmes that allow potential mature students to get a flavour of college life before committing to a full-time programme while we also work closely with schools that may not have a long tradition of large-scale progression to higher education.
"We have also never had more ways of gaining entry to our programmes and start from an inclusive standpoint rather than looking to exclude students who don’t meet traditional formal entry requirements. In addition, once students enter the system they are provided with a range of supports that help them stay and succeed in reaching their potential. In widening access for people with disabilities, we are continuing to invest in assistive learning technologies that aid accessibility.
"Aside from the fairness issue, the wider life experiences of mature students also serve to diversify and enrich our learning environment. Our traditional school-leaving entrants benefit from studying alongside these colleagues who draw on a wealth of knowledge accumulated over time."