The Global Context for Widening Participation in Creative Arts Higher Education

da Costa, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2604-1545 (2022) The Global Context for Widening Participation in Creative Arts Higher Education. In: Access and Widening Participation in Arts Higher Education. The Arts in Higher Education . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 23-48. ISBN 978-3-030-97449-7

Abstract

Widening participation in creative arts higher education has international, national, and localised manifestations. This chapter explores the global context of widening participation by considering the policy model of neoliberalism. From a global perspective, widening participation in higher education generally has been linked to economic prosperity by supplying a workforce with high-level skills and knowledge. The neoliberal paradigm conceptualises higher education as benefitting the individual and contributing to their personal prosperity while simultaneously benefitting the national economy. Therefore, global policies are directed towards widening participation in particular ways. Measures to widen participation have increasingly focused on individuals, responsible for funding their education as customers and positioned as having choice and opportunity. As customers need to make informed choices, world rankings of universities have become a significant driver in higher education and also a mechanism of elitism, with implications for students who do not attend leading universities or who study subjects not perceived as contributing to economic growth, such as the creative arts. Students’ global mobility has strengthened the case for harmonisation of higher education systems yet priorities and policies regarding widening participation largely remain tied to national and localised considerations, with slowly growing efforts towards international analysis.

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