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After tracking post-pandemic learning loss and academic recovery, the  Education Recovery Scorecard  (a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research  at Harvard University and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University) has issued a report examining the effect of federal pandemic relief on academic recovery, finding that   ESSER aid supported academic recovery during the 2022-23 school year, especially among low-income districts, but work is still needed to make the recovery complete. 

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Looking back on a year of impact: see cepr's 2023 in review.

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The task of advancing the power of data analytics to address issues of educational equity and systemic improvement is often marginalized within district leadership. The Strategic Data Project provided me with a breadth of technical and adaptive skills to meet this critical need and support my role as a change agent in my district.”

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MCAS results show Massachusetts students, schools haven't reversed pandemic learning loss

BOSTON - Newly released MCAS test results show Massachusetts schools and students have not reversed pandemic learning loss. ... Read more about MCAS results show Massachusetts students, schools haven't reversed pandemic learning loss

MCAS results show more learning loss ahead of ballot question

CEPR Faculty Director Tom Kane is interviewed about pandemic learning loss as MCAS scores are released. ... Read more about MCAS results show more learning loss ahead of ballot question

The scary truth about how far behind American kids have fallen

Students of all ages still haven’t made up the ground they lost during the pandemic. ... Read more about The scary truth about how far behind American kids have fallen

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School Performance, Accountability and Waiver Reforms: Evidence from Louisiana

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School poverty—not racial composition—limits educational opportunity

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The Revealed Preferences for School Reopening: Evidence from Public-School Disenrollment

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Mass Instruction or Higher Learning? The Impact of College Class Size on Student Retention and Graduation

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CEPA in the News

The police in St. Petersburg, Fla., knew well that Jeffrey Haarsma had mental-health issues. Officers had been to the 55-year-old’s home at least 25 times in the year prior to an emergency call on Aug. 7, 2020. But the lone responding officer shot and killed Haarsma, who was unarmed, as he attacked her during an attempted arrest over a minor offense. While Pinellas County officials later decided the shooting was justified, they also concluded the call should have been handled as a mental-health issue rather than a criminal investigation.

Since that day, there have been nearly 2,000 fatal shootings by police officers in the line of duty. Roughly 1 in 5 involved a police response to someone showing signs of mental illness. It doesn’t have to be this way.

In the fall of 2016, the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) launched a set of pilot programs to assess potential expansions of federal financial aid. One of these programs allowed participating colleges to award Pell Grants to eligible high school students concurrently pursuing college coursework. This program, set to end in summer 2022, was established to increase access to dual enrollment and subsequent college attendance for students of low-income families.

In a  recent article  published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), we show that this program not only failed to increase low-income students’ access to dual enrollment but may have actually decreased access. Despite the good intentions behind the program, it created new barriers to dual enrollment for colleges and families. These unintended consequences offer important lessons for policymaking.  

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Analysing Education Policy

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Analysing Education Policy: Theory and Method provides a comprehensive overview of key approaches in critical education policy research. With chapters from internationally recognised and established scholars in the field, this book provides an authoritative account of how different questions may be approached and answered.

Part 1 features chapters focused on text-based approaches to analysis, including critical discourse analysis, thinking with Foucault, Indigenist Policy Analysis, media analysis, the analysis of promotional texts in education, and the analysis of online networks. Part 2 features chapters focused on network ethnography, actor-network theory, materiality in policy, Institutional Ethnography, decolonising approaches to curriculum policy, working with children and young people, and working with education policy elites. These chapters are supported by an introduction to each section, as well as an overall introduction and conclusion chapter from the editors, drawing together key themes and ongoing considerations for the field.

Critical education policy analysis takes many different forms, each of which works with distinctly different questions and fulfils different purposes. This book is the first to clearly map current common and influential approaches to answering these questions, providing important guidance for both new and established researchers.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part | 17  pages, introduction, chapter 1 | 15  pages, part 1 | 108  pages, document and text analysis, chapter 2 | 7  pages, document and text analysis in critical education policy studies, chapter 3 | 16  pages, critical discourse analysis, chapter 4 | 15  pages, thinking with foucault to understand education policy, chapter 5 | 20  pages, indigenist policy analysis, chapter 6 | 15  pages, media analysis, chapter 7 | 15  pages, sites of promotion, chapter 8 | 18  pages, online networks and education policy sociology, part 2 | 123  pages, participant analysis, chapter 9 | 7  pages, participant analysis in critical education policy studies, chapter 10 | 21  pages, network ethnography in education, chapter 11 | 14  pages, actor-network theory, chapter 12 | 15  pages, the vital materiality of policy, chapter 13 | 15  pages, institutional ethnography, chapter 14 | 14  pages, decolonising curriculum policy research through community-centredness, chapter 15 | 20  pages, beyond surveys and focus groups, chapter 16 | 15  pages, researching policy elites in education, part | 8  pages, chapter 17 | 6  pages, analysing education policy.

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Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

Moving Beyond Tradition

• © 2017
• Michelle D. Young 0 ,
• Sarah Diem 1

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Dept. of Educ. Lead'ship & Pol. Analysis, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA

• Diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to critical policy analysis in educational policy and educational leadership
• Insights into the use of critical theoretical perspectives in policy scholarship
• A comprehensive approach to critical educational policy with a focus on contemporary issues

Part of the book series: Education, Equity, Economy (EEEC, volume 4)

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Doing Critical Policy Analysis in Education Research: An Emerging Paradigm

Using Critical Theory in Educational Research

Critical Theories of Education: An Introduction

• LGBTQ issues in educational policy
• advocacy approaches in educational policy research
• analysis of parent involvement in schools
• argumentative discourse analysis
• critical democratic analysis
• critical race theory and identity
• educational policy
• en-gendering leadership
• feminist critical policy analysis
• feminist poststructural theory analysis
• feminist poststructuralism in educational research
• implementation of school desegregation policies
• institutional logics
• neo-institutional theory
• policy for research with youth of color
• queer analysis of public educational policy
• student voice in school improvement
• the accountable educator

Table of contents (13 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: critical approaches to education policy analysis.

• Michelle D. Young, Sarah Diem

Emphasis on Methods

Critically examining policy workers and policy work within state boards of education.

• Michelle D. Young, Amy Luelle Reynolds

A Critical Policy Analysis of the Politics, Design, and Implementation of Student Assignment Policies

Public educational policy as performance: a queer analysis.

• Michael P. O’Malley, Tanya A. Long

The Politics of Student Voice: Conceptualizing a Model for Critical Analysis

• Anjalé D. Welton, Tiffany O. Harris, Karla Altamirano, Tierra Williams

When Parents Behave Badly: A Critical Policy Analysis of Parent Involvement in Schools

• Erica Fernández, Gerardo R. López

A Feminist Critical Policy Analysis of Patriarchy in Leadership

• Catherine Marshall, Mark Johnson, Torrie Edwards

Emphasis on Theory

Silent covenants in the neoliberal era: critical race counternarratives on african american advocacy leadership in schools.

• Chandra Gill, LaTasha L. Cain Nesbitt, Laurence Parker

Policy Enactments and Critical Policy Analysis: How Institutional Talk Constructs Administrative Logics, Marginalization, and Agency

• Rodney S. Whiteman, Brendan D. Maxcy, Erica Fernández, Samantha M. Paredes Scribner

Ontario’s Fourth ‘R’: A Critical Democratic Analysis of Ontario’s Fund-‘R’aising Policy

• Michelle Milani, Sue Winton

Examining the Theater of “Listening” & “Learning”

• Bradley W. Carpenter

Utilizing Michel De Certeau in Critical Policy Analysis

• Curtis A. Brewer, Amanda Bell Werts

Policy Studies Debt: A Feminist Call to Expand Policy Studies Theory

• Wanda S. Pillow

Back Matter

“Young and Diem’s book provides a roadmap for reconstructing and reframing traditional approaches to educational policy analysis.  It should be required reading for any student of educational policy and politics.” (Cindy Gerstl-Pepin, University of Vermont, USA)

Editors and Affiliations

Michelle D. Young

Dept. of Educ. Lead'ship & Pol. Analysis, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

Book Subtitle : Moving Beyond Tradition

Editors : Michelle D. Young, Sarah Diem

Series Title : Education, Equity, Economy

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39643-9

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-319-39641-5 Published: 24 November 2016

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-319-81929-7 Published: 28 April 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-3-319-39643-9 Published: 18 November 2016

Series ISSN : 2364-835X

Series E-ISSN : 2364-8368

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVI, 285

Number of Illustrations : 9 b/w illustrations

Topics : Educational Policy and Politics , Educational Philosophy , Administration, Organization and Leadership , Curriculum Studies

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Education Policy and Analysis

The Master’s in Education (Ed.M.) prepares students with the skills needed to change the world through education. HGSE’s Ed.M. centers on three pillars of study: Foundations, which focus on core skills and knowledge; Programs, which focus on specific areas of practice; and Concentrations, which are opportunities to deepen contextual knowledge. Together, these pillars empower students to create transformative learning at every level and in every role. The Education Policy and Analysis (EPA) Program prepares students to lead policy development, analysis, and change in organizations and settings across the U.S. and around the world. Students learn how to scale effective practices and leverage policy in order to expand their reach.

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The Changing Face of the Teaching Force

Richard Ingersoll is an expert on teachers - how they work, where they work, and why they work. In a school reform climate that questions how much autonomy teachers should have in their work and their classrooms, Dr. Ingersoll looks to data for answers.

Dr. Ingersoll’s research sheds light on one of the largest and least understood professions in the United States. His work explores trends that have altered the face of the teaching force over the past three decades. Since the late 1980s, the teaching force has ballooned in size, significantly outpacing growth in student enrollment. Yet teaching has largely grown to meet new needs—from special education to language instruction to more math and science high school teachers. The research gives insights into recent trends in teacher turnover, mostly created by a churn of new and minority teachers into and out of the profession. Today, the most common (or modal) teacher has just one to three years of experience.

READ THE PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force, Updated October 2018. A highly anticipated update of a 2014 report published by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

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Center for Education Policy Analysis

The Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) works to improve public education by serving as a resource for education decision makers. We work with schools, districts, state and federal agencies, nonprofits and other universities to provide research and analysis on the issues facing public education.

Our services include program design and evaluation, quantitative and qualitative research, policy and legal analysis, planning and facilitation, and expert staffing for public commissions and processes. 

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New Research September 2024

• Leading for Equity and Student Growth: Lessons from the Transformation of the Denver Public Schools CEPA Practitioner Perspectives Series Tom Boasberg and United States Senator Michael Bennet
• Study Summary
• Systemwide and Intervention-Specific Effects of Denver Public Schools’ Portfolio District Strategy on Individual Student Achievement

System-level Research on Denver Public Schools

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs Denver Public Schools' system-wide education reform strategy from 2008-2019. Co-authored by CEPA director Parker Baxter, SPA Dean and Distinguished Professor Paul Teske and Associate Professor Todd Ely, the study provides a comprehensive, system-level answer to the question of whether Denver's reform strategy led to improved academic outcomes for students.

Read a summary of the research findings. -->

Read the full technical report. -->, watch a video of the research discussion from dec 6, 2022 -->.

Featured Project: Elevating Family and Community Voice in Aurora Public Schools

For the past three years CEPA has partnered with the Center on Reinventing Public Education to consider a paradigm-shifting approach to family and community engagement efforts in school districts. Working with the Wend Collective , a locally-based nationally-focused foundation, the project launched with the ongoing Blueprint redesign in Aurora Public Schools (APS). As the pandemic struck, APS community engagement pivoted and expanded in response. This project seeks to respond in kind, exploring the essential questions of dynamics and structures for community voice in today’s public school systems. Learn more by reading the issue briefs below.

Issue Briefs

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Transforming Systems from the Bottom Up: Co-Creating Change in Aurora, Colorado

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the vital role that school systems play in supporting children, families, and communities and on the capacity of those systems to respond effectively and equitably to the needs of students. Modern school districts were built to meet the demands of exponential population growth, urbanization, diversification, and industrialization. Yet, as collections of individual schools, districts have since their inception struggled to balance the complexities of governing and operating multiple schools across multiple communities of multiple means and multiple demands. Even as they strive to meet our individual and collective aspirations, they also reflect our local and national failures.

Read the issue brief:   Issue Brief 1 - January 2022

Events Archive

CEPA hosts the Education Policy and Networking Series. Co-sponsored by the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education & Human Development, this series provides a forum for emerging policy-savvy teachers and analysts, as well as education policy leaders. Visit our events page for more information.

District Leadership During A Pandemic (02-03-21)

As Colorado entered a second school year in a pandemic, schools and systems from coast to coast have been forced to figure out how to deliver a high-quality education and effectively address a multitude of student needs all while the nation struggles to fight a deadly disease. Systems were wrestling with many of these difficulties before the pandemic to be sure, but the virus caused a disruption of a different magnitude.

Superintendents are often said to have an impossible job, and that’s in normal times. Superintendent Rico Munn has led Aurora Public Schools (APS), Colorado’s fifth largest district, since 2013. APS is responsible for the education of more than 40,000 students, who come from more than 130 countries and speak 160 different languages. Nearly half of students speak English as a second language, and over 65 percent qualify for federally subsidized school meals. Although in-person classes have recently resumed, the district’s 65 school buildings were closed for much of the past year, many used for food banks as the district shifted to remote instruction.

Join the CU Denver School of Public Affairs and School of Education and Human Development for an in-depth conversation with Superintendent Munn about school district leadership during the pandemic.

Watch the video .

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Publications

Leaving Children Behind: How Colorado’s Fiscal Policies Hurt Our Most Valuable Citizens -  October 2009

This report focuses on the connection between Colorado’s dramatic childhood poverty rate and the challenges of the state’s fiscal policy structure.

Student-Centered Funding and its Implications for Colorado: A Primer for Policy Makers -  August 2009

This report provides a basic background of our current system of financing public education in Colorado and discusses potential opportunities and implications of introducing student-centered funding to the state.

Race to the Top: Teacher and Principal Effectiveness -  August 2009

This white paper provides information to help those working on the Colorado Great Teachers and Leaders Race to The Top (R2T) Committee, and is intended to complement information provided by the Colorado Department of Education.

Race to the Top: Standards and Assessments -  August 2009

This white paper provides information for those working on Colorado’s Standards and Assessments Race to the Top (R2T) Committee, and is intended to accompany information provided by the Colorado Department of Education.

Race to the Top: Establishing Data Systems and Using Data for Improvement -  August 2009

This white paper provides information to Colorado’s Longitudinal Data Systems Race to the Top (R2T) committee. It is intended to complement the white paper prepared by the Colorado Department of Education.

Race to the Top: Turning Around Struggling Schools -  August 2009

This white paper provides information to support the work of Colorado’s Low Performing Schools Race to the Top (R2T) Committee.

Teacher Identifiers and Improving Education Practice -  August 2009

This series of five white papers explains how the teacher identifier is being used in Colorado districts and nationwide to improve teaching and learning, and provides advice to Colorado policymakers in creating a statewide teacher identifier.

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation and School Choice -  July 2009

This project first surveyed the landscape of transportation and school choices in Denver and Washington, D.C., to find out their travel patterns and school choice options.

Options for Autonomous Schools in the Metro Denver Area
 -  June 2009

This report is the result of conversations among members of Colorado’s education reform and business communities interested in encouraging the development of autonomous schools in Colorado.

Colorado STEM Network Progress Report -  November 2008

Colorado was one of six states selected to receive a $500,000 two-year award from the National Governors Association to create the Colorado STEM Network.

Colorado STEM Network Report Card -  March 2008

Find out how Colorado ranks on measures of preschool, K-12, and postsecondary performance in this state report card for Colorado’s P-20 education system.

Learning about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics -  January 2008

This report assesses the state of STEM education in Colorado.

Engineering the Future: Career and Technical Education Redesigned for Today’s Students -  December 2007

CEPA researchers found that the best of today’s CTE classes work at the intersection between academic content and practical application. The report profiles model programs and identifies challenges.

Pay-for-Performance Teacher Compensation: An Inside View of Denver’s ProComp Plan -  August 2007

Get the inside story of the ProComp initiative. The authors describe how entrepreneurial behavior within the teachers’ union and support from outside philanthropic groups propelled the plan from a cutting-edge concept into concrete policy.

Governor’s Colorado P-20 Council Brief: P-3: The Foundation of the Learning Continuum -  August 2007

This briefing defines “P-3,” puts it in the context of P-20 definition, identifies the challenges of access, quality, and equity across the P-3 continuum, and poses important questions for state policymakers.

Governor’s Colorado P-20 Council Brief: Teacher Quality -  August 2007

This briefing identifies key teacher quality issues, the challenges around teacher teachers, existing policy tools at the state and local district level, and poses important questions for state policymakers.

Governor’s Colorado P-20 Council Brief: Transitions Into Post-Secondary Education -  August 2007

Colorado seeks to double the number of certificates and degrees awarded by the state’s postsecondary institutions. This briefing discusses current opportunities for and barriers to reaching that goal and poses important questions for state policymakers.

Governor’s Colorado P-20 Council Brief: State Educational Data Systems: How Does Colorado Measure Up? -  August 2007

This briefing describes the Colorado context for collection and analysis of education data, and poses important questions for state policymakers.

Governor’s Colorado P-20 Council Brief: The Graduation Gap in Colorado -  August 2007

Written by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, and CEPA, this briefing material for Governor Bill Ritter’s P-20 Council poses important questions for state policymakers.

Funding Map for After-School Programs in Colorado -  July 2007

Researchers examined current and potential federal and local funding sources for after school programming and attempted to determine the degree to which Colorado providers tap into these funds.

Colorado Statewide Homeless Count -  February 2007

Researchers from CEPA and the Center For Public-Private Sector Cooperation analyzed point-in-time data for the Colorado Division of Housing to describe what we know about homeless respondents, their families and children.

Opening Doors: How Low-Income Parents Search for the Right Schools -  January 2007

This report refutes some common assumptions about how low-income parents make school-choice decisions, and finds that these parents use the same techniques and tools, and are just as satisfied with their decisions as wealthier parents.

Learning Together: Assessing Colorado’s K-12 Education System -  October 2006

CEPA provides research and analysis on issues affecting preK-16 education in Colorado.

Achievement Gap: Colorado’s Biggest (Education) Problem -  December 2006

Colorado’s education achievement gap creates a major issue of equity and threatens to create new inefficiencies. The authors look at the size of this achievement gap and how it has changed over time.

Shining the Light: The State of Teaching in Colorado -  Fall 2006

The authors examine issues of teacher quality in Colorado and provide recommendations for improving the quality of instruction for all students across the state.

Funding Colorado’s Schools: Stepping Up or Bottoming Out? -  January 2005

CEPA clarifies and simplifies some of the central issues in as objective a manner as possible, so a reader can learn the basic context and trends of K-12 finance, and make sense of proposals by policymakers.

Regulation in the States -  2004

Paul Teske offers a comprehensive analysis of the evolving role of state governments.

How to request copies

All CEPA publications are available in PDF format to download and print. We will mail one free printed copy upon request. Additional copies can be purchased for $10 each (to cover our printing, shipping and handling costs). 

Contact us at  [email protected]  to request printed copies.

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Home / Publications & Research / HE/FE and Skills / Higher education is in crisis – but have we forgotten about further education?

Higher education is in crisis – but have we forgotten about further education?

Following rising inflation, frozen tuition fees, and falls in international students, it feels as if the higher education (HE) sector in England is at a financial precipice. The Office for Students (OfS) forecasted that 40 per cent of HE institutions were expected to run a loss in 2023/24, with some HE providers already feeling the squeeze, announcing large-scale staffing cuts and redundancies.  

As Labour’s first Budget and associated spending review draws near, reassurance in the face of this crisis is something keenly anticipated by the HE sector. The rumoured tuition fee rise would be popular with providers, but the longer-term sustainability of the current HE funding model remains in doubt.  

Yet despite these well-founded worries, there is a crucial part of the education landscape going largely ignored in this debate – further education . In its manifesto, Labour had promised a ‘comprehensive strategy’ that would ‘better integrate’ further and higher education, but what this commitment means in material terms is yet to be seen.  

The FE sector remains a key piece of the puzzle for developing a sustainable and effective post-18 system, one that would both drive social mobility and ease the woes of universities in the long-term.  

With this in mind, how does the financial health of the FE system compare to that of the HE sector? We’ve taken a look at data from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to assess the state of the two sectors’ finances over the last six years across 4 key metrics.  

A few points of note – figures presented are sector-wide averages; even within sectors, the financial health of individual institutions can vary significantly from year-to-year. While we have used weighted measures where possible, these sector averages may still mask financial issues present in the sector for smaller institutions, particularly in higher education where the sector is dominated by a relatively small number of large providers. Pension transactions have been excluded from this analysis due to their disproportionate impact on providers’ balance sheets in certain years.   

Nevertheless, both college and university accounts are prepared to the same reporting standards, allowing for the comparison of financial statements.  

How many providers are operating at a deficit?  

Put simply, a provider is in deficit if it is spending more money in a given year than it takes in income. On the other hand, a larger income than expenditure would put the provider in surplus. While running a deficit in a particular year is not necessarily indicative of poor financial health, few institutions have the reserves to operate with long-term deficits, and a rise in the number of providers operating with deficits may indicate growing financial difficulty across the sector.  

Proportion of providers in operating deficit, 2017/18 – 2022/23  

Sources: HESA income and expenditure data, 2017/18 – 2022/23. ESFA financial management: college accounts, 2017/18 – 2022/23. Expenditure figures are adjusted to remove the impact of changes to pension costs.  

Since 2017/18, a steadily growing proportion of HE providers have been in an operating deficit, with this figure reaching a record high of 36 per cent in 2022/23. At the same time however, a consistently greater proportion of FE providers have been running deficits. Despite this, the FE sector did see a fall in the proportion of providers reporting deficits in the latest year of available data, 2022/23. This is in large part a result of additional 16-18 spending included as a part of the 2021 spending review. The boost for the sector, while positive, has not been as impactful as expected given the scale of inflation in the past year. Without maintaining or increasing this level of funding in the 2024 spending review, this trend is unlikely to continue.  

What is the average surplus/deficit of providers?  

Also of note is the average size of the surplus or deficit. A smaller average deficit would suggest that even if a majority of providers are spending more money than they take in, they are still largely able to meet their spending needs.   

This metric is income-weighted, so that providers with larger incomes and larger surpluses/deficits have a greater impact on the sector-wide average. It is also presented as a percentage of income rather than a raw figure. As such, a value of zero would indicate that the sector as a whole is breaking even when adjusted for income.  

Operating surplus/deficit as a percentage of total income (income weighted), 2017/18 – 2022/23  

Since 2017/18, the mean income-weighted operating deficit as a percentage of total income has remained positive for HE providers, reflecting the previous chart that indicated a consistent minority of providers in deficit. In 2022/23, this figure has fallen to its lowest since 2019/20, the year before providers began to see some cost savings as a result of shifts to online teaching and lowered use of campus facilities in the wake of the pandemic.  

Further education providers experienced the opposite throughout this period. Despite a brief sector surplus in 2019/20, the sector deficit plunged in the following years. In 2022/23, the sector returned to a surplus (again boosted by additional funding from the 2021 spending review) but remains below the higher education average.  

How well are providers able to meet their debts?  

The ratio of a provider’s short-term assets (such as cash, inventory, and receivables) to its short-term liabilities (such as payroll, taxes, and money owed to suppliers) is known as the ‘current ratio’. This is an indicator of the provider’s liquidity, or its ability to pay short-term debts.  

A ratio of 1.5 for example, would indicate that for every £1 the institution owes in liabilities, it has £1.50 to cover that debt in the form of accessible assets. A healthy current ratio is generally considered to be above 1.2, whereas a ratio below 1.2 may indicate difficulties in meeting debts.  

Mean current ratio, 2017/18 – 2022/23  

Sources: HESA key financial indicators, 2017/18 – 2022/23. ESFA financial management: college accounts, 2017/18 – 2022/23.   

The average current ratio for both sectors has increased steadily since 2017/18 and has always remained above the 1.2 threshold. This is a positive indicator for both, suggesting on average they are increasingly able to meet their short-term obligations.  

In higher education, the average ratio is considerably higher at 2.9 in 2022/23, with 19 per cent of providers falling below the 1.2 threshold. In further education however, the average ratio sits at 1.8, while 25 per cent of providers have a current ratio below 1.2.  

Proportion of providers with current ratio below 1.2, 2017/18 – 2022/23  

Put together, these financial metrics show a clear picture: when compared to their higher education counterparts, more further education providers are in deficit, their deficits are larger, and they are less able to meet those debt obligations.   

Given this picture, the Treasury must place further education alongside higher education in terms of funding priorities in the upcoming budget. Without adequate funding for the sector, the scale of the challenges outlined above will only grow in the coming years, leaving many providers with an increasingly troubling financial outlook.   

Alongside this, the government should consider how this funding can further support level 4 and 5 (higher technical) provision and apprenticeships for students under 25. As well as an important part of meeting growing skills demands, this provision can play a role in broadening participation in education and training after age 18, particularly among students from low-participation areas and those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who research has shown are more likely to participate in FE than progress to higher education. Furthermore, these alternatives to undergraduate degrees are less costly to both the Treasury and to prospective students, whilst also providing comparable employment outcomes.   

Ultimately, further education must be seen as part of a holistic system of post-18 education of the kind Labour pledged to develop in its 2024 manifesto. This can’t happen unless both sectors are financially sustainable.  

Robbie Cruikshanks

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Home > Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies > Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies > 16348

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion in the retention of faculty women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Sherri Reese , Walden University Follow

Date of Conferral

Date of award.

Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.)

Rich Thompson

Gender discrimination and the underrepresentation of women of color in faculty positions in higher education institutions, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments, is a research and policy problem. Despite efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in higher education workplaces, women of color remain largely underrepresented among STEM faculty. Informed by Adams’s equity theory, Tajfel’s social identity theory of organizational commitment, and Bell’s critical race theory, the purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between diversity and organizational commitment and inclusion and organizational commitment among faculty women of color. Survey data were collected from 118 African American women across higher education institutions in the United States. For this sample, descriptive statistics show moderately high perceptions of diversity, inclusion, and organizational commitment. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The regression analysis also revealed a statistically significant and positive relationship between perceived diversity and the organizational commitment of African American women faculty working in STEM. There was a small positive but statistically nonsignificant relationship between perceived inclusion and organizational commitment of African American women faculty working in STEM. Results may provide insights to inform policies and practices for fostering a supportive and inclusive academic environment.

Recommended Citation

Reese, Sherri, "Workplace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Retention of Faculty Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics" (2024). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies . 16348. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/16348

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