Towards a Capability for Higher Education Outreach: Exploring the Role of Faculty Members in Tackling Educational Inequalities in India

Higher education (HE) outreach has the potential to tackle enduring hidden inequalities in HE access across caste, class, ethnicity and gender, inequalities which are belied by enrolment statistics that point to HE massification and enhanced equality of access. In India, within the public sector there is currently little HE outreach activity happening in an official capacity, although there is a proven appetite for this work (Stewart et al., 2023). This talk builds on the notion of ‘public-good professionalism’ (Walker & McLean, 2015), to advance a capability for HE outreach, considering the potential of faculty members (FMs) in HE institutions (HEIs) to engage in outreach practices that enable prospective students from disadvantaged communities to become more informed about HE. The empirical base of the presentation is an in-depth case study of a government college (i.e. public-funded HEI) in Delhi that is nested within a four-year research project, ‘Widening Access to Higher Education in India: Institutional Approaches’ (www.warwick.ac.uk/wahei). The presentation goes on to show that, even in the absence of a formalised HE outreach culture in public HEIs in India, FMs are ‘exercising their professional capabilities as public-good functionings’ (Walker & McLean, 2015:63), by serving as sources of HE-related guidance and information in their local communities. This practice is supplementing the dearth of formal information and guidance on HE choices for young people in disadvantaged communities. There is therefore an argument for mapping FMs’ role in HE outreach using a capabilities lens, to consider the support and resources that are needed to develop FMs’ capability.