Paper short abstract:

This paper advances the notion of a capability for higher education (HE) outreach, based on an in-depth case study of a public HE college in Delhi, India. The paper argues that a formalised HE outreach culture can help rectify enduring hidden inequalities of HE access and choice. The paper engages with the notion of 'professional capabilities' to discuss faculty members' involvement in outreach.

Paper long abstract:

This paper builds on previous applications of the Capabilities Approach (CA) to higher education (HE) access (e.g. Walker & Mathebula, 2020; Wilson-Strydom, 2015) and ‘public-good professionalism’ (Walker & McLean, 2015), to advance the notion of a capability for HE outreach, considering the potential of faculty members (FMs) in HE institutions (HEIs) to engage in outreach practices that enable prospective students from disadvantaged communities to become more informed about HE. The term ‘HE outreach’ refers to activities occurring before formal enrolment into HE, which may include taster days which host prospective students at HEIs, and school visits by alumni and/or FMs (Harrison & Waller, 2017). HE outreach is particularly targeted at prospective students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, where often there is limited history of HE access in previous generations. Importantly, HE outreach has the potential to tackle enduring hidden inequalities in HE access across caste, class, ethnicity and gender, inequalities which are belied by enrolment statistics that point to HE massification and enhanced equality of access; this is pertinent in relation to the context of study for this paper, namely India (Henderson, Sabharwal & Thomas, 2022).

The focus thus far in capabilities analyses of HE has largely been on understanding students’ capabilities, with FMs positioned as having the potential to expand students’ capabilities, but often failing to do so (Loots & Walker, 2015; Mutanga & Walker, 2019). FMs’ own capabilities have scarcely been considered; where this work has been undertaken it is in relation to other topics, such as sustainability (Ndubuka & Rey-Marmonier, 2019; Nussey et al., 2022) or service learning (Mtawa & Wilson-Strydom, 2018). This paper on the notion of a capability for HE outreach therefore makes a contribution to CA analyses of HE access and the role of FMs within HE more generally.

In India, many young people from socio-economically disadvantaged groups are making HE choices based on incomplete knowledge (Sahu et al., 2017; Stewart et al., 2022). Affirmative action is strongly in place in the public sector in India (Hasan & Nussbaum, 2012), but in order to avail of affirmative action, a prospective student must be informed about choices in relation to HE and the application process. In India, there is a very strong ethos of ‘community outreach’, where HEIs engage with local communities, through e.g. clean-up programmes, but the mission of this form of outreach is not to guide and inform about HE; within the public sector there is currently little HE outreach activity happening in an official capacity, although there is a proven appetite for this work (Stewart et al., 2023). It is noteworthy that the 2020 National Education Policy (MHRD, 2020) does refer to HE outreach as an imperative for the future development of HE. HE outreach activities are not currently formalised as part of a FM’s duties, for instance in the Academic Performance Indicator (API) score which is used for academic promotion. Arguably, a formalised HE outreach culture in Indian HE, at least in the public sector, could contribute to tackling enduring inequalities of HE access and choice.

In this paper, we explore existing HE outreach practices (though often occurring informally and not labelled as such) and how these practices were explained by FMs. The body of work by Walker and McLean (e.g. Walker, 2012; Walker & McLean, 2015) on professional education and public-good professionalism is helpful in developing an HE outreach capability. While this work focuses on professional university education (e.g. social work), there is applicability to FMs in HEIs, where academics too can be conceived as ‘professionals who support the capability expansion of their clients by exercising their professional capabilities as public-good functionings’ (Walker & McLean, 2015:63). The notion of a professional capability for HE outreach is particularly salient because an orientation towards HE outreach is arguably an ethical and vocational orientation towards social justice.

The empirical base of this paper is an in-depth case study of a government college (i.e. public-funded HEI) in Delhi that is nested within a four-year research project, ‘Widening Access to Higher Education in India: Institutional Approaches’ (www.warwick.ac.uk/wahei). The government college was selected based on its peripheral location in Delhi, meaning it is favoured by students from disadvantaged groups. Ethical approval was granted by the appropriate University committee. The case study included several methods and participant groups; for this paper the data considered are as follows: semi-structured interviews with the Principal and four FMs; six-week solicited diary study and post-diary interviews with the interviewed FMs; a questionnaire survey with FMs (N=59).

Our case study shows that there is an active but informal practice of HE outreach occurring, with 93.3% of FMs (survey) stating they had guided prospective undergraduate student/s on their HE-related choices. The HE outreach capability can be divided into micro-level functionings. The most common functionings identified in our survey were to guide prospective students on choice of HEI and on choice of course/subject. The study revealed that FMs were consulted for HE-related advice in their personal networks; for instance, Athene* (interview) recounted that she had assisted her father’s gardener’s daughters on their HE choices. The study showed that motivations to engage in HE outreach included ‘a sense of social responsibility’ (Victor*, diary entry 1), with FMs voluntarily acting as ‘capability expanders’ (Walker & McLean, 2015). The survey identified that the greatest constraint that FMs face in terms of formalising their HE outreach activities is the funding resource constraints (see also Demb & Wade, 2012; Johnson et al., 2019).

Our study shows that, even in the absence of a formalised HE outreach culture in public HEIs in India, FMs are ‘exercising their professional capabilities as public-good functionings’ (Walker & McLean, 2015:63), by serving as sources of HE-related guidance and information in their local communities. This practice is supplementing the dearth of formal information and guidance on HE choices for young people in disadvantaged communities. There is therefore an argument for mapping FMs’ role in HE outreach using a capabilities lens, to consider the support and resources that are needed to develop FMs’ capability.

*Pseudonym.