We’re really interested to see next week’s symposium on rurality and access to higher education which is taking place on the 31st March. It is free of charge and we thought that it might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Global inequalities are increasingly manifested spatially and the ever widening disparities between urban and rural populations have been further increased by the massive changes in educational provision and need for digital infrastructure brought on through the COVID 19 pandemic, particularly for low income countries and those in the global South.

This one-day symposium will focus on rurality and access to higher education across a wide range of global South and global North contexts, demonstrating that the complexities are not confined to particular countries.

Globally, there is a significant amount of research on equity of access but surprisingly little on the mediating effects of rurality on higher education. As UNESCO (2020) highlighted recently, students from rural communities remain under-represented and to some extent, a forgotten group in higher education. The recent Special Issue of the journal Compare ‘Rurality and Access to Higher Education’ foregrounds these issues (Trahar, Timmis, Lucas and Naidoo 2020). Exploring the experiences and challenges for students from rural backgrounds in accessing higher education across multiple contexts in this symposium is therefore very timely.

To find out more and register for the event visit the Centre for Higher Education Transformations, University of Bristol website.