UK universities ‘underperforming’ on equality and diversity

UK universities have their work cut out when it comes to improving equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), according to a new report which claims that not a single university has reached an “advanced” stage of development. 

The Higher Education Honordex report, produced by EDI consultancy firm Equality Group, ranks 166 UK universities based on publicly available information.

The top scoring institution is Manchester Metropolitan University, followed by Bournemouth University and Oxford Brookes University. Only the top-performing 20 institutions are listed in the publication, which was funded by a grant from Innovate UK.

Universities are given a score out of 100, based on 68 metrics grouped into six categories: explicit EDI support; inclusive teams; working and learning conditions; actions and data; leadership; and additional information. Universities can lose points for legal reports on racism, harassment and other complaints.

The report categorises a score of 0-20 as beginner, 21-69 as intermediate and 70-100 as advanced. The highest scoring university has 62.1 points, while the average score for all universities is 41.

Equality Group has previously built a similar comparison tool for the financial services sector. Keon West, head of research at Equality Group, said that he was surprised at the low average score from the sector.

“From the inside of a university, there is so much talk about diversity and equity…the university scores were, for me, and I just say in terms of an emotional response, lower than I would have expected them to be. They’re not performing as well as I thought they would be given talk that they put into it,” Professor West said.

The report does not provide details of the weighting of metrics, but they are linked to evidence, Professor West explained. For example, universities get points for being signed up to diversity charters such as Athena Swan. “Charters are good…but the problem with charters in the scientific literature is that the apparent directionality of charters is just one way. So, if you are a university that is signed up to a charter, you are probably more diverse and inclusive. But if you take a bunch of universities and get them to sign up to a charter, they don’t become more diverse or inclusive…so for that, we’ll give it relatively low marks, but having a high proportion of people in leadership, that gets really high marks.”

The highest-scoring Russell Group institution is the University of Oxford, with 55.7 points.

The report acknowledges that redundancies and department closures since the data collection ended in July may have changed the picture for some universities. For example, at Goldsmiths, University of London, where Professor West has worked, “a number of people have pointed out that the people who have been removed are disproportionately women, disproportionately ethnic minorities, disproportionately likely to lead things like the master’s in black studies or the master’s in queer studies”, he said.

rosa.ellis@timeshighereducation.com