ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I suggest that widening participation in Higher Education (HE), where deemed desirable, might be both more complex than some policy commentators imagine and simpler than some academics suggest. While I use evidence from a series of studies of patterns of participation in post-compulsory education, for reasons of space readers will have to follow references for the majority of this evidence and the methods that generated it. These include replies to ad hoc questions from the EU directorate for Education and Culture, a study based on EU Socrates funding, an ESRC study of UK HE participation and occupational progression, and reviews of existing evidence for the UK Department of Education, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and the Higher Education Funding Councils for England and for Wales (e.g. Gorard et al. 2007; Gorard 2010; Gorard and Smith 2010; Gorard et al. 2011; Smith and Gorard 2011; See et al. 2011).
