G is for GENDER (and other binaries)

The seventh in an alphabetical series of blog posts: A-Z: An alphabetical journey through the doctoral experience. 

The title of this post is intentionally provocative. I don't believe gender is a binary. This post is inspired by a recent trip to see British actress Maxine Peake playing Hamlet at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.  About which, more in a moment... 

If you were asked to imagine a part-time, mature higher education student what image would come to mind?  I'm guessing there's a pretty good chance it would be a woman?  Statistically, that's well supported. Over 65% of part-time learners are female and as 90% of part-time learners are mature - well, you can do the maths!  But what are the potential consequences of stereotypical assumptions about these students?  Gendered assumptions about their identities, capabilities and needs? Invisibility of male part-time students and a lack of attention to their interests?  Reduction of a diverse group to a set of common attributes?

This is nothing new and not just in higher education.  But the reason it's important is that, firstly, UK higher education seems all too reliant on binary short cuts: traditional/non-traditional; mature/young; full-time/part-time; working-class/middle-class...  and of course, female/male.  These categories fail to depict the rich and complex diversity of each individual let alone whole student cohorts and have consequences in terms of policy and practice. Secondly, my doctoral research (on part-time, mature undergraduates and retention) attempts to challenge typical models of 'an HE student'.  Yet I find myself having to challenge my own tendency to essentialise, to label, to categorise - all for the convenience of reporting data.  Using excuses such as 'broadly' and 'overall' doesn't compensate for ignoring the potential for nuance and contradiction.  

Gender is nuanced, diverse and complex.  Gender is constructed.  Maxine Peake played Hamlet as a principal boy, flouncing and heroic.  She looked like a baby dyke (look it up).  Occasionally her Hamlet was a sulky teenager, gurning and sneering.  I'm happy Maxine got a juicy part to get her teeth into - too rare for so many actresses as excellent as she is.  I'm happy for the Royal Exchange Theatre that they've had to extend the run to meet the demand for tickets.  But somehow, I was disappointed by the production.  It all seemed too obvious. One of the most important tasks in my research is to depict the wide diversity of part-time students for what it is, not a flattened, convenient category but a population defying classification. 

part-time matters

Yesterday saw the launch of Part-Time Matters, a campaign highlighting the benefits of part-time study to the UK economy, society and the individual.  Backed by a range of stakeholders in part-time higher education including universities, their mission groups and the NUS, the campaign has launched in response to the dramatic 40% decline in part-time applications to higher education following the 2012 reforms to higher education.  Universities UK has already started to conduct a review into the reasons behind the drop.  

The publicity around part-time higher education is not simply timely, it is overdue.  My doctoral research into retention and part-time, mature students, has revealed the dominance of full-time as the 'authentic' model in institutional, policy and media representations of higher education,  despite one third of all higher education students studying part-time.  There is a tendency to lump part-time students in with 'disadvantaged' groups despite their varied profile. 

Why does part-time matter?  As the campaign argues, part-time higher education brings economic and employment benefits to students/employees and employers; it widens access to higher education and it has a positive impact on personal development. I think it matters too, to our higher education institutions and all their students.  Part-time students bring life experience, employment skills and knowledge, alternative perspectives and astonishing motivation and commitment to their study.  This matters, diversity matters, part-time matters.

Are you studying part-time or know someone who is?  Do you teach part-time students?  What do you think are the particular challenges and benefits of this mode of study?

'at home' in higher education?

My reading about retention of students in higher education is taking me in the direction of belonging and from belonging into identity and place.  So I've become particularly alert to the ways in which people use space to create place, to establish connections between the people they are or would like to be, the things they do and the places they inhabit.   

This was illustrated for me yesterday when, in a brief respite from case study research design, I went to visit several makers participating in Stroud International Textiles Festival Open Studios Weekend   Part of the delight involved in these weekends is discovering places on your doorstep you never realised existed.   Of course during Open Studios weekend, the studio becomes a shop window, the artistic process is self-consciously available for public consumption.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed imagining the private creative process taking place within them on a daily basis.   Yesterday's visits revealed two makers' studios tucked away up a narrow, tree-lined path.  One was little more than a lean-to with a view of the garden; the other was a purpose-built garden 'room' with a green roof.  Both were compact, distinctive workplaces. 

It got me thinking about my own 'studio' (derived after all, from the Latin studere, to study): essentially a desk in the spare room, a noticeboard and a shelf of books.  It's the nearest I can get to the garden room with the green roof.  But this workspace has become an important part of my development as a doctoral researcher.  It keeps that part of my life distinct, it's an acknowledgment of the importance of place to the development of a learning identity.  

These observations feed my thinking about the larger questions about learning and social spaces; about the ways in which student populations use campus space - inclusively and exclusively; what it means - and who is allowed - to feel at home in higher education?

goodbye Berlin, hello Bakewell

Just back from a short trip to Berlin which featured a visit to the Reichstag - an architectural invitation to transparency and reflection which never fails to inspire.  It was good to experience (albeit briefly) Berlin's energy and style (and to escape the Thatcher media frenzy for a few days).  Back to work now and an opportunity to reflect on Joan Bakewell's welcome intervention in the part-time study debate  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22039482 .   Government statements on the issue seem wilfully blinkered if not purposefully obtuse.  The facts are that part-time undergraduate enrolments in higher education for 2012/13 are down 40%; postgraduate down 27%, following the introduction of significantly higher tuition fees.  Keep your eyes peeled for the outcome of the UUK Review of part-time study http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Pages/UniversitiesUKpart-timeReview.aspx.

social mobility? what's not to like?

Last week I attended a conference on higher education and social mobility.  The holy grail of the 'graduate job' and the fast disappearing 'graduate premium' have encouraged the assumption that HE is good for social mobility.  The only way is up.  
As someone researching part-time, mature students in higher education I was looking forward to some critical discussion of the term.  After all, social mobility might mean something different to a 40 year old student changing career direction than to a 21 year old first time entrant to the labour market.   Should all students (and staff) subscribe to the overwhelmingly economic emphasis placed on social mobility in policy documents and institutional publicity? 
There were some thought provoking contributions.  Professor Chris Brink VC  of Newcastle University argued for a more lateral conception of social mobility which embraced its moral and social dimensions as well as economic; civic and public good as well as private benefit.  Social mobility he said encompasses university as a destination and as a point of departure.  It was an interesting perspective, idealistic perhaps.  I wondered how a VC of a new university might have approached the subject.  Claire Callender (Birkbeck, Institute of Education) reported on recent research demonstrating that part-time learners acquire AND deploy the significant benefits they gain from HE in their working and non-working lives while they are studying as well as afterwards.  She argued that the lower financial but wide-ranging, non-financial benefits of part-time study means that part-time students should attract greater subsidy.  There was also a stimulating presentation from Professor Ann-Marie Bathmaker as part of the Bristol Paired Peers project http://www.pairedpeers.com/Home.html, showing the stratification of social mobility across different universities and the ways in which middle-class students mobilise all the capitals: economic, social, cultural available to them to compensate for their attendance of 'lower-status' universities. 
There was also plenty of rhetoric and evidence of an unquestioning approach to social mobility, not to mention a couple of presentations which were not about social mobility at all, but simply added the term to their presentation title....(nothing new there!)
And today a further dimension to the social mobility discussion - the presentation of a new 7-social class model ranging from elite to 'precariat'...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058  More on this once I've taken the test to discover where I fit....!

six months and counting...

This seems like an appropriate moment to jump into the blogosphere....

I'm six months into a PhD researching how UK universities retain (or don't) part-time, mature students.

These dispatches from the field of higher education/academia will record my reflections on inhabiting the role of a doctoral student (I didn't see that coming!), my engagement with all aspects of my research and a watching brief on the state of UK higher education.  And yes, the title's implication of conflict/struggle/battle IS intended. 

To start, here's some context.  The UK government's funding reforms for higher education seem to have hit part-time student enrolment hardest.  It's down 40% from 2010/11 (BBC News 14 March 2013).