A great deal of recent scholarship on economically disadvantaged students and higher education works under the foundational assumption that going to college can and/or should serve the goal of economic mobility. This article considers a cost of using higher education for this purpose -- specifically, the impact on the decision-making of poor…

The international development community made a commitment to transformative goals related to social, economic, and environmental justice that requires them to leave no one behind. We argue that the use of transformative and indigenous frameworks for evaluation provide guidance towards achieving those goals. We provide a rationale for inclusion of…

This article draws on the theories of Mezirow, Foucault, and Holland and colleagues to investigate how students were positioned in relation to their own experiences, what opportunities they had to overcome their negative positioning in relation to the power structures that inform the worlds in which they move, and how their changed practices…

In this article, we focus on how neoliberal performance metrics impact on non-traditional students at a modern university in England. We argue that the introduction of 'quality assurance' measures, (such as the National Student Survey and the Teaching Excellence Framework) are driven by an ideology which purports to have student's best interests…

For some time now, it has been evident that the policies pursued by the United States to elevate the academic performance of students, particularly those who are most economically disadvantaged, have not produced the results that were promised or hoped for. This paper analyzes the efforts of schools and school districts to improve academic…