Report reveals significant challenges ahead for equality in higher education

The higher education sector still faces significant challenges in creating equality for all staff and students, despite making some progress over the last five years, reveals a report published today (20 October) by Equality Challenge Unit, the higher education equality body.

Equality in higher education: statistical report 2009 found that over the past five years:

• The proportion of black and minority ethnic (BME) students achieving first and 2.1 honours degrees has increased; however the attainment gap between BME and white students continues to widen.
• Higher education institutions have seen a marked increase in the proportion of students disclosing a disability - from 5.5% of all students to 7.3%. While this is a very welcome trend, it carries implications for the disability support workloads of academic departments, student services and Student Finance England.
• The proportion of professors and heads of department who are women has risen from 15.1% to 18.7%. At this rate of change it could take another 33 years for men and women to be equally represented at this level.
• The average age of academic staff has continued to increase, from 42.7 to 43.7. An ageing workforce will add pressure to reconsider the default retirement ages that are still in place within the vast majority of higher education institutions.

Sue Cavanagh, Deputy Chief Executive of Equality Challenge Unit, said:

'At a time when the higher education sector is facing considerable financial pressure, it is particularly important to understand and address ongoing - and in some cases increasing - patterns of disadvantage to ensure that the economic situation does not perpetuate or increase these.

While statistics alone do not fully explain the complexities of the issues of disadvantage, they can be used as a starting point for institutions to identify where they can most effectively focus their efforts and measure the impact that their policies are having in promoting equality and diversity.'

The Statistical report 2009 forms part of ECU's ongoing work to support universities and colleges to evidence their own equality and diversity work. It is being launched alongside a guide to collecting and using staff equality data, to help institutions to develop methods of data collection for areas such as sexual orientation and religion and belief.

ECU has also been working with the Higher Education Statistics Agency to develop heidi equality, a new function of the Higher Education Information Database (heidi) that enables institutions to run detailed reports about the composition of their workforce and student body, and benchmark their performance against other institutions or the sector as a whole.