Theme 2: Equity, quality and affordability

Thursday 23 April, 11.45am – 1.15pm

Measures of teaching quality: A legitimate guide for students and funders?

Panellists:

• Dr Helen Carasso, University of Oxford
• Dr Andrew Gunn, University of Manchester
• Professor Paul Ashwin, Lancaster University
• Professor Christopher Millward, University of Birmingham
• Dr Patricio R. Sanchez-Campos, University of Nottingham

The absence of an agreed measure of teaching quality in higher education remains a wicked problem. As teaching quality cannot be measured directly, proxies are widely
used. These measure are what Gunn (2022) calls the wider ‘teaching mission of the university’. This is a wider pool of measures that can include student satisfaction and outcomes.

The use of such proxies raises questions of how the data generated should be used, specifically, how indicators of teaching quality have been, or should be, used in
applicants’ decision making and in resource allocation. It has been argued they can inform student choice, institutional priorities, and the funding decisions of the state.

The continued interest amongst public policy makers to fund teaching on a quality basis, i.e., based on a measure of performance, sustains the profile of the debate on
how to measure teaching quality. The use of performance agreements by states which allocate resources by factors such as completion rates provide an example of funding being tied to performance indicators. Such formula funding models are used in countries including Denmark and Sweden. Teaching quality may also inform supplementary funding such as the MECESUP programme in Chile (1999-2016) where performance agreements were used to improve institutional quality. (Staring et al., 2025; World Bank, 2018)

England has the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) which grades providers on a range of measures. The development of new metrics for the TEF shows the challenges of developing new measures of teaching quality (Gunn, 2022). And the measure that can be used are at best indicators of possible differences in teaching quality, and not absolute metrics. In the England in 2025 the proposal that the outcomes of the TEF could be used to determine the caps set on home undergraduate fee levels resurfaced, a decade after it was first suggested and then dropped.

Here, teaching quality measures are a feature of a high-tuition funding model using income-contingent student loans. They are seen as an incentive to deliver higher quality teaching at a time of financial strain. The legislation proposed in October 2025 showed the government was committed “….. to ensure the Office for Students has the capacity and power to swiftly identify low-quality teaching provision, and intervene to tackle it……. we will make future fee uplifts conditional on higher education providers achieving a higher quality threshold .” (Department for Education, 2025 p. 65). This suggests that significant credence can be placed on judgments on teaching quality, as made in England through the TEF). However, the Discover Uni website (https://discoveruni.gov.uk/), operated by the Office for Students to provide standardised information to undergraduate applicants, includes only one evaluation of each institution – its TEF outcome. This information, the site explains, does not provide absolute measurement of teaching quality: “..it is helpful to look at the TEF rating as this can give an indication to the university or college’s overall level of excellence…….” (Authors’ emphases)

Within the context of a live debate in England on the validity and applicability of measurements of teaching quality, this panel considers the extent to which such
judgments can and should have a role in financial models of higher education.

Framed within the context of a range of national experiences, it will, debate how proxy indicators of teaching are being used, the extent to which they can be reliable, the incentives unleashed in practice and if these can deliver the desired results.

Thursday 23 April, 2.15pm – 3.45pm

Tertiary education, the risk society, the state, and access to tertiary education. What are students ‘buying’?

Panellists:

• Professor Stephanie Allais, Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
• Professor Bill Esmond, Institute of Education and Skills University of Derby
• Professor Simon McGrath, Associate Dean: Research Culture, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow
• Dr Gavin Moodie, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Education, University of Oxford
• Professor Emerita Leesa Wheelahan, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Education, University of Oxford

Alongside the ‘high-tuition/high-aid’ Anglophone tradition, policymakers in wealthy English-speaking countries have also sought to divert the questions of affordability and access that Claire Callender’s work poses by situating alternative tertiary education routes that are putatively closer to labour markets. This panel takes a broader perspective that considers the nature of the ‘risks’ students undertake through such ‘investments’ in education and how relations of class, gender, race and other dimensions of inequality mediate their access and perceptions of cost and risk.

Our analysis explores the social institutions in which students are enmeshed, which provide varying levels of support for transitions into tertiary education (including higher and vocational education) and thence to work. The sociologically mediated individualisation of the individual and the individualisation of risk increase the ‘stakes’ in decisions to participate in tertiary education, because of the subordination of social institutions, democracy and civil society to the market. As Streeck (2016, 22 original emphasis) explains, ‘Now states were located in markets, rather than markets in states’.

As social institutions have diminished, the significance of education, now a substitute for the welfare state, and its ‘investment’ risks has increased. Meanwhile, the purposes of education have narrowed to support the market through the production of human capital. Universal systems of tertiary education are not universalist: whilst students in elite institutions may still access a universalist curriculum, those in ‘mass’ institutions, such as ‘new’ universities and vocational colleges, access only narrow interpretations of human capital, defined as skills, and measured by contingent labour market outcomes.

Friday 24 April, 9am – 10.30am

Higher education equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: From system and institutional policies to intersectional student-centred approaches

Panellists:

• Julieta Abba, Associate Researcher and Vice-Coordinator of the UNESCO Chair on Education in Global Citizenship and Socio-Environmental Justice, Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Brazil
• Anna Maria Zuhlke O’Connor Del Fiorentino, PhD student, University of Cambridge, UK
• Cristina Fioreze, Professor, Universidade de Passo Fundo, Brazil
• Luz Gamarra Caballero, PhD student, University of Newcastle, Australia
• Emma Harden-Wolfson, Assistant Professor, McGill University, Canada
• Miah Dionne Sears, Master’s student, McGill University, Canada
• Andrés Valencia Mafla, PhD student, McGill University, Canada

This roundtable will bring together emerging and established researchers from The Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, and Perú whose divergent professional and lived experiences are connected by a shared research commitment to higher education equity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Part I will focus on the policy context underpinning efforts to create more equitable higher education systems and institutions. Miah Dionne Sears will draw on a comprehensive literature review conducted in partnership with UNESCO studying higher education equity policies for equity-deserving groups, highlighting the emerging themes for LAC. Emma Harden-Wolfson will examine access and financing policies in Uruguay, a context where one of the principal challenges is a lack of recognition of inequality in the higher education system. Andrés Valencia Mafla will explore how Colombian public universities are transitioning to human rights-oriented well-being systems, and some implications of this shift for faculty, staff and workers. Cristina Fioreze will discuss the need for greater investment in institutional policies in Brazil to combat persistent socioeconomic and racial inequalities despite high-profile policies to democratize access to higher education.

Part II will investigate equity from intersectional student-centred approaches. Through a case study of the Amazon region of Perú, Luz Gamarra Caballero will explore indigenous women students’ success in higher education and their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities they face. Anna Maria Del Fiorentino will present on first-generation women graduates and their mothers in Brazil and England, comparing how different financing structures shape intergenerational access, belonging, and mobility. Julieta Abba will give details of ongoing research on the access of migrants and refugees to Brazilian public higher education and the challenges these groups face in persisting in their studies.

Friday 24 April, 11am – 12.30pm

Marketisation vs. affordability: Challenges in the financing of higher education in India

Professor N.V. Varghese, Distinguished Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay, former Vice Chancellor, NIEPA, New Delhi, Founding Director Centre for Policy Research in Higher Education, NIEPA & former Head of Governance and Management in Education, International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP/UNESCO), Paris (as Chairperson/Discussant)

Speakers:

• Dr. Jinusha Panigrahi, Associate Professor, MRIIRS, Faridabad, Delhi-NCR – Title of the paper: The Price of Prestige: Who Pays for Marketed Excellence in Private Higher Education in India?
• Mr. Eldho Mathews, Programme Officer for Internationalisation of Higher Education at the Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC), India – Title of the paper: International Branch Campuses in India: Promise of Investment or Perpetuation of Inequality?
• Dr. Emon Nandi, Assistant Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India – Title of the paper: Innovative Financing in Indian Higher Education: Assessing State Credit Card Schemes and Direct-Payment Strategies

In the growing knowledge economy in the era of globalisation and supportive global policies towards internationalisation, financing of higher education has become an important policy concern for emerging economies like India. The massive expansion of Indian higher education in the initial decade of the 21st century has pushed the GER in higher education to 28.4 percent in 2025. However, since the expansion is driven by the private higher education institutions offering market oriented courses, this has further

accumulated serious concerns of affordability by the students from deprived sections of the population. While competing demand for public funds restricts allocation of resources supporting the quasi-public good argument for higher education, the growing expansion of private higher education sector further complicates the concerns of regulations, global standard or quality and majorly affordability to higher education by the underprivileged sections of population. Internationalisation and the race for ‘Global ranking’ by higher education institutions to align with policy recommendations overshadows the concerns of affordability to job oriented courses by at least 50 percent of the population of the country. Several alternative financing models such as interest free education loans, voucher systems in the form of fee reimbursement schemes, and philanthropic contributions have failed to address such concerns as recommended by the National Education Policy 2020.

This panel based on empirical research work using a mixed-methodology approach addresses such concerns of sustainable financing to enhance affordability by the
deprived sections of the society. It highlights the financing of private higher education institutions, recent internationalisation initiatives in India with an equity perspective. Innovative financing options such as State Credit Card Schemes are explored which have remained unexplored in the Indian context.

Friday 24 April, 1.30pm – 3pm

Sustainable academic partnerships for equity and social justice in HE in Palestine

Panelists:

• Professor Dina Kiwan, School of Education, University of Birmingham
• Dr. Omar Shwaiki, Director, Friends of Palestinian Universities (formerly Friends of Birzeit University)
• Professor Rita Giacaman, Birzeit University, West Bank
• Professor Nazmi Al-Masri, Islamic University of Gaza and CARA Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow
• Dr. Maha Shuayb, Center for Lebanese Studies and Department of Education, University of Cambridge

Whilst there is recognition that research partnerships between the Global South and the Global North should be equitable, inclusive and collaborative, there are enduring institutional, structural and geopolitical obstacles that undermine Southern researchers being able to co-lead on the setting of research agendas based on contextual priorities, sharing intellectual property, enhancing local capacity, and co-creating new emerging knowledge. In Palestine, attempts to decolonise the knowledge production has long been challenged by occupation and ensuing infringement of academic freedom (Kiwan, 2024), coupled by the hegemony of neoliberal and politicised funding systems in the Global North (Giacaman, 2023). Given the ongoing occupation in the West Bank, and ‘plausible’ and now widely recognised genocide in Gaza (ICJ, 2024), ‘scholasticide’ (Nabulsi,  2009) and the attempted annihilation of Gazan higher education has seen the targeting of all 19 universities, with over 80% of all universities being physically destroyed (UNESCO, 2025). University partnerships will be critical for the reconstruction of Gaza, but agendas must be led by Palestinian experts (Mqadma, 2025). This panel will discuss a number of challenges in establishing UK-Palestinian university partnerships, including i) the UK higher education environment, which has failed to demonstrate moral and ethical solidarity or uphold its professional and human responsibility toward a higher education system under deliberate and sustained attack, reflecting hesitant and bureaucratic senior university leadership that remains largely unreceptive and fearful of establishing meaningful partnerships; ii) Initiatives and strategies to date that can be further developed;  and iii) first-hand accounts of dual decolonisation efforts from West Bank and Gaza.

View full conference programme for Days 1 and 2.