Access and Participation in Irish Higher Education

This book explores the access and participation issues present within Higher Education in Ireland. It examines policy, pedagogy and practices in relation to widening participation and documents the progress and challenges encountered in furthering the ‘access agenda’ over the past two decades. Access has become an integral part of how Higher Education understands itself and how it explains the value of what it does for society as a whole. Improving access to education strengthens social cohesion, lessens inequality, guarantees the future vitality of tertiary institutions and ensures economic competitiveness and flexibility in the era of the “Knowledge Based Economy”. Offering a coherent, critical account of recent developments in Irish Higher Education and the implications for Irish society as a whole, this book is essential for those involved both in researching the field and in Higher Education itself.

Ted Fleming is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Adult Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. He recently received the Jack Mezirow Living Theory of Transformation Learning Award for ‘outstanding contribution to the development of the theory of learning’ at Teachers College.

Fergal Finnegan is Director of the Higher Diploma of Further Education course and Lecturer at the Department of Adult and Community Education at Maynooth University, Ireland. He has recently co-edited Student Voices on inequalities in European Higher Education: Challenges for Policy and Practice in a Time of Change and is one of the convenors of the ESREA Network on Active Democratic Citizenship and Adult Learning.

Andrew Loxley is Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He has jointly edited Higher Education in Ireland: Practices, Policies and Possibilities.

Mark Kearns has completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Prior to this, he spent ten years working in adult and community-based education, more recently working with long-term unemployed adults returning to education, including higher education.