Project overview
Between 2019-20 to 2020-21, when universities changed their assessments and adopted ‘no detriment’ policies because of COVID-19, the undergraduate awarding gap between white and all other students significantly narrowed from 12.3% to 8.6%, the largest reduction in 16 years.
We ask did a ‘good’ degree outcome (a First or Upper Second class) for racially minoritised graduates open careers in research and innovation. We focus particularly on Black graduates, for whom the awarding gap is widest.
We identify two critical issues:
- The dominant narrative that COVID-19 mitigations significantly narrowed the awarding gap risks obscuring other impacts of COVID-19 and new equality gaps for racially minoritised students.
- The narrow focus on numerical awarding gaps in policy risks overshadowing broader anti-racist interventions needed to dismantle systemic racism in higher education and to truly open career pathways for racially minoritised graduates.
Dr Kamna Patel (Principal Investigator)
Paulette Williams (Co-Investigator), Head of Student Success at UCL
The project partners are Leading Routes
