While many policy makers attempt to close the educational divide, precollege programs have the ability to creating a college going culture and develop college aspirations throughout the entire K-12 pipeline. Exposure to college culture and the college system grants students opportunities to develop college aspirations, skills, confidence, and…

Whilst the widening participation programme aims to increase the accessibility of undergraduate study for students with a lower socio-economic status, much less support is available for students wishing to progress to postgraduate study. Postgraduate study risks becoming a discipline exclusive to those from upper-middle class and upper-class…

Mentorship is vital to increasing graduate school access in computing; however, mentorship must be structured in power-conscious, developmental ways to ensure equitable access to and support within computing graduate pathways. I engage a critical quantitative lens to examine mentoring support among undergraduates with reported graduate…

Research, as well as mainstream culture, may be too quick to label parenting young people of color (which we define as being under or near the age of 20 when having a child) as delinquent and "at risk". Using qualitative data, we offer anti-deficit framing surrounding students of color with children, highlighting the unique achievements…

Widening participation in England has been framed around two primary needs; raising attainment and raising aspiration. Whilst aspiration is complex, policy definitions often frame it in narrow economic terms and see access to higher education as primarily about developing a workforce, the underlying logic being that to improve social mobility that…

This article reports on issues of diversity in the context of "widening participation" in "global higher education" (HE). Mature students represent a third of the HE student population in Australia, Canada, UK and the USA. More research is needed to understand factors that can facilitate or hinder access to HE for this group.…

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and…

Raising the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds progressing to higher education has been a key policy objective for successive governments in the UK since the late 1990s. Often this has been conceptualised as a problem with their 'aspirations,' with the solution being seen as the provision of 'aspiration-raising' activities…

The aim of this conceptual article is to provide a framework and a lens for educators in diversifying and making CS education more inclusive. In this article, we conceptualize the notion of computer science capital (CSC), which extends Bourdieu's sociological theory of capital and Archer et al.'s work on "science capital." The CSC…

This paper analyzes challenges indigenous Peruvian college students face in completing their studies, based on field research that included interviews with Peruvian higher education leaders, administrators, researchers, and faculty, and a review of published research. Since 2012, the government of Peru has sponsored Beca 18, a comprehensive…

The COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities (COSMO) study is a new national cohort study generating high-quality evidence about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected socio-economic inequalities in life chances, both in terms of short- and long-term effects on education, wellbeing, and career outcomes. A representative sample of young people in…

Violent conflicts are becoming a regular feature across the world. Studies have pointed to the impact they have on the education of young survivors. But education appears in these studies as an instrument of integration. They overlook the processes both within and outside schools that affect the educational lives of young survivors. This article…

College access programs like Upward Bound have been found to build social capital among a target population, stimulate academic preparedness, and increase a student's knowledge of the college decision process. However, little research is available that establishes the points during the college decision process at which college access programs have…

Increasing rates of school enrolment have changed childhoods in the global South, so that it is now the norm for children to attend at least some years of primary school. This paper explores the extent to which valuing of children as educational projects and outcomes may be displacing previous valuations of children as contributors to the domestic…

A growing body of research points to the important role played by "institutional agents" in facilitating college access and success for students from non-dominant racial-ethnic and low socioeconomic status groups. Applying attachment theory, this study adds to that literature by demonstrating how institutional agents can provide a secure…