Box of delight

This blog was kindly contributed by Professor Randall Whittaker, Pro-Vice Chancellor Academic and Leeds Arts University. You can find Randall on Twitter @RandalWhittaker.

On Wednesday 21 April HEPI hosted the third webinar in a series with Advance HE on ‘How do we ensure equality in higher education in a pandemic?’. You can watch the recording here.

Over the years there have been numerous calls for action to abandon the divisive BAME term which have predictably not been heeded. I have previously argued that the homogenous term BAME is not only lazy but also problematic. Who exactly are you referring to when you use it? BAME has no nuance and the way it is being used impacts the lives of people of colour negatively; ‘BAME’ is being use to misrepresent the experience of Black and brown people and to mask inaction.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report published at the end of March this year, recommends that the term should be disaggregated. Although I support this recommendation it is concerning that in other parts of the report the Commission use disaggregation to explain differential outcomes between Black communities:

UK universities must demonstrate their commitment to university-wide change as they seek to eliminate the black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student attainment gap in UK higher education, concludes a new report by Universities UK (UUK) and the National Union of Students (NUS).

Led by Baroness Valerie Amos, Director of SOAS, and Amatey Doku, Vice President for Higher Education at the NUS, UUK and the NUS have been working with universities and students since June 2018 to tackle the disparity between the proportion of 'top degrees' (first or a 2:1 degree) achieved by white and BAME students.

Today's publication of the report - Black, Asian and minority ethnic student attainment at UK universities: #ClosingtheGap - follows contributions from 99 universities and student unions and six regional roundtable evidence sessions with 160 attendees on how the attainment gap should be tackled. These five steps for universities to improve BAME student outcomes have been identified:

As we engage in discourse that acknowledges the past and looks to the future, Black History Month offers a timely reminder of the interventions needed across higher education to tackle the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student attainment gap. In the HEPI report The white elephant in the room, the authors recommend that higher education institutions participate in the Race Equality Charter, do groundwork to facilitate conversations about race and avoid vague actions that are unlikely to effect change. These are excellent ideas for reducing racial inequalities in higher education, but another gap between Black and White graduates persists after they leave the institutions – an outcomes gap. As the first release of HESA’s Graduate Outcomes Survey has shown, fifteen months after graduating from university UK-domiciled graduates from BAME backgrounds are 8% less likely to be in full-time graduate employment than their White peers (54% versus 62%) and BAME graduates were also more likely to be unemployed than White graduates.