27 Feb 2020, UCL Institute of Education
Marie-Agnes Detourbe, University of Toulouse

A key feature of the 21st century is undoubtedly the increased flow of people across the world. Whether chosen or forced, these displacements have nurtured new forms of interconnectedness and opened new spaces. They have also led more traditional spaces to adjust. Higher education is a case in point: it can provide an array of answers to people experiencing chosen or unchosen displacement while taking hold of the specific challenges raised by their diversity. Across different nations however, the ability of HE systems and institutions to adapt to new forms of internationalization and widening participation has proved challenging, all the more so as immigration logics and language issues also come into play. The edited book presented at this GCHE seminar explores the three intertwined thematic perspectives of access to higher education, immigration and language issues under the cross-cutting theme of inclusion. Through a variety of approaches such as policy analysis, social network analysis, ethnography or bio narratives, the chapters offer multidisciplinary insights into the various barriers and opportunities which people on the move face when they try to access higher education in different national settings across the world. My talk will provide an analytical overview of those barriers and opportunities while putting into perspective the key role that HE can play in the sustained inclusion of people on the move.

Exploring the Dynamics between Access to Higher Education, Immigration and Languages

28 Feb 2020, Department of Education, University of Oxford
Dr Krystian Szadkowski, Adam Mickiewicz University

Drawing on the findings from the research on the public good in the Polish higher education system this paper addresses the issue of how the concepts are filled with meanings and how they impact the material reality in return.

Despite the striking differences, the public good is often used interchangeably with the common good in Polish higher education.

This presentation discusses the legal and historical background of the emergence of the concept of the common good at the foundations of the constitutional order in Poland, contrasts it with the public good tradition and presents its consequences for the relationships between the state, the social and the higher education as seen from the perspective of the different actors (governmental, institutional, discipline-based).

Centre for Global Higher Education