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Widening and expanding participation in Australian higher education: in the absence of sociological imagination

Version 2 2024-06-07, 00:29
Version 1 2015-10-05, 14:39
journal contribution
posted on 2015-04-01, 00:00 authored by Trevor Gale
Social inclusion in Australian higher education was high on the agenda of the recent Rudd/Gillard Australian Government. This paper offers an assessment of that agenda, particularly the extent to which it worked in favour of under-represented groups. It argues that the Government’s widening and expansion policies and its equity and aspiration strategies lacked sociological imagination, projecting deficits onto individuals who refused to be taken in by its ambitions for higher education participation. The paper concludes that in the absence of a sociological imagination in government policy, the freedoms of disadvantaged groups continued to be curtailed: not just to choose futures in keeping with their goals but also the freedom to formulate choices.

History

Journal

Australian educational researcher

Volume

42

Issue

2

Pagination

257 - 271

Publisher

Springer

Location

New York, N.Y.

ISSN

0311-6999

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal; C Journal article

Copyright notice

2015, Springer