Universities in the United Kingdom want equality and therefore greater representation of students from BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) background at their respective schools. Unfortunately, the onus of ground-level execution falls on academicians from the BAME category, creating additional stress.
This is not just limited to academicians, but students of the BAME community also feel this additional pressure.
Kalwant Bhopal is a professor of the University of Birmingham. Bhopal remarks that the execution of schemes to address inequality often falls on the same group that suffers from it. As someone who belongs to the “ethnic minority” category, she feels that this work allocation comes without recognition. She says,” The BAME attainment gap should be something everyone should be working to address, not just a particular group.”
The vice president of the “National Union of Students” Amatey Doku says this extra “burden” is creating some inequalities which it aims to abolish in the first place.
Office for Students for removing BAME disparities
Office for students (OfS) is an independent group that works with the Department of Education, UK. They are armed with a mandate to eliminate disparities in college in-take within the next twenty years.
Part of their agenda highlights this ambition:
- The most “selective” universities should have similar admission numbers for all groups of students.
- Decrease the rate of dropouts among students of BAME groups.
Chris Milward, a Director at OfS says,
“Our ambition is that future generations should have equal opportunities to access and succeed in higher education, and to achieve successful and rewarding careers.”
Positive steps by Universities to drive change
Higher education in the UK has more students from ethnic minorities today than it did in the last decade. But the disparities are still significant. The current government has launched initiatives intending to lessen this gap. This will hold the universities accountable basis actual data that will be recorded and measured.
King’s College London has launched a program to collect data and recommend interventions that would be most impactful.
Coventry University offers a paid internship to its students who work with the college authorities to make the curriculum more inclusive. Nottingham Trent University also provides pay to “student guides” who will help freshmen navigate the first years of college life.
The intentions of the authorities are indeed noble, and it is all very well to say that “nobody experiences a worse outcome solely on the grounds of their ethnicity” but are all the issues addressed here?
While the Universities Minister spoke about the importance of inclusiveness in keeping with the spirit of “Modern Britain,” he faced a lot of criticism. These measures are introduced at a time when grants are abolished pushing the minorities towards more loans. This will force people from lower economic and BAME backgrounds more than the others into incurring liabilities.
Today, nearly 8 million people in Britain come under the BAME category. Hopefully, the representation of students from this group in top universities should show a positive change as a result of these efforts.
