Realising the Educational Potential of Mass Higher Education

Name: Realising the Educational Potential of Mass Higher Education
Price: 180 AUD
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ISBN: 9781350511576

Dr Paul Ashwin (Lancaster University, UK), Margaret Blackie, Jennifer Case (Virginia Tech, USA) , Dr Jan McArthur (Lancaster University, UK)

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Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
19 February 2026

Higher & further education, tertiary education

Series: Bloomsbury Higher Education Research

This open access book addresses the current disillusionment with mass higher education and argues that it is based on a profound misunderstanding of its educational potential.

The authors analyse a seven-year longitudinal research project that tracked participants who studied chemistry or chemical engineering from their first year of university until up to three years after they graduated. Drawing on over 700 interviews with students/graduates from two English, two South African and two American universities, the book explores the educational intentions of their degree programmes, what participants wanted to get out of going to university and studying for a degree, how their views of knowledge and the world changed, and what they felt they had gained from going to university. The book argues that the educational potential of higher education lies, not in graduate salaries or employability, but in the ways in which engaging with structured bodies of knowledge changes students’ understanding of the world and what they can do in it. The authors consider the implications of this argument for how the educational role of higher education is understood by students, graduates, universities, and policymakers and how this understanding might be drawn upon to counter the damaging disillusionment with mass higher education that appears to be growing in many countries.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

By: Dr Paul Ashwin (Lancaster University UK), Margaret Blackie, Jennifer Case (Virginia Tech, USA), Dr Jan McArthur (Lancaster University, UK), Nicole Pitterson (Virginia Tech, USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350511576
ISBN 10: 1350511579
Series: Bloomsbury Higher Education Research
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 19 February 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University, UK. He is Deputy Director of the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE). Margaret Blackie is Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, Rhodes University, South Africa. Jennifer Case is Professor and Head of the Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Tech, USA. Jan McArthur is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University UK. Nicole Pitterson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, USA. Reneé Smit is the director of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education (CREE) at the University of Cape Town based in South Africa. Ashish Agrawal is Assistant Professor, College of Engineering Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. Kayleigh Rosewell is Senior Research Associate in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. Alaa Abdalla is post-doctoral research in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Benjamin Goldschneider is Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, USA.