About the event
Research continues to show differences between the attainment of racially minoritised undergraduates and their White counterparts in UKHE (UUK/NUS, 2019 & 2022). This ‘ethnic penalty’ (Hasmath, 2012; Khattab & Modood, 2014) is evident in those students’ degree classifications, (un)employment patterns (HESA, 2018) and pay (Henehan & Rose, 2018; Kollydas, 2023).
Those attainment disparities also contribute to the ‘leaky pipeline’ to postgraduate study for racialised researchers (Wakeling et al., 2016; Office for Students, 2021), and contribute to the under-representation of racialised academics working in higher education (Bhopal, 2017; Bhopal & Pitkin, 2020).
Despite being a known phenomenon for the better part of the last three decades (Bhattacharyya et al., 2003; Advance HE, 2019-2023), and the subject of many costly interventions across the sector (HEFCE, 2014; Mountford-Zimdars et al., 2015; UUK/NUS, 2019; UUK, 2022), the problem persists.
In this seminar, speaker Ratha Perumal, University of East London (re)conceptualises our understanding of the factors that contribute to such racialised attainment disparities - commonly referred to as the degree award gap in HE – as a way to facilitate the formulation of institutional interventions that can achieve a meaningful resolution to this stubborn, wicked problem (Rittel & Weber, 1973).
