Inequity of undergraduate outcomes: interactions between student demographics, institution type and the Covid-19 pandemic

Inequity in Higher Education is under increasing levels of scrutiny. Most universities have poorer outcomes for students from multiple historically marginalised groups defined by ethnicity, age, disability or gender. Here we explore data for two undergraduate outcomes embedded in the UK HE policy landscape; continuation into the second year of study and final degree class awarded. We adopt a natural experiment approach, using publicly available sector level data for 163 UK HE providers representing continuation outcomes for 1,823,820 students and 1,591,540 students for awarding. We construct linear models to determine the role of institutional factors and the Covid-19 pandemic on outcome gaps based on gender, disability, age and ethnicity. We identify significant differences in outcome gaps based on institution type which has been underappreciated. There was a significant impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on awarding gaps by disability and ethnicity but not gender or mature student status. For gender and disability there was no relationship between continuation and awarding, but for age and Asian students there are significant institution level correlations between continuation and awarding gaps, indicating these gaps might be driven by common underlying factors. Our findings highlight the importance of considering both individual and institutional factors contributing to inequity. This large scale analysis of student outcome data identifies new directions for research, and may inform the design of sector and institution level interventions to address inequity.