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This book addresses the ways in which British higher education institutions have responded to equal opportunities issues, particularly race issues. The book is organized around four university case studies conducted in 1992 and 1993. The case studies involved analyses of equal opportunities policy documents of each university and semi-structured interviews with senior management, relevant staff, academics, and local academic trade union officials. Analyses focused on three aspects: first, the characteristics of equal opportunities policies, the processes of their formation, and the structures put in place for implementation; second, the institutional discourses that surrounded equal opportunities policy; and, third, the ways in which the two main academic trade unions the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education have been involved in raising and campaigning around equality issues. Individual chapters address the following topics: (1) researching equal opportunities in higher education (issues, dilemmas, and self); (2) the changing face of higher education in Britain; (3) uneasy relationships (trade unionism, equal opportunities, and academic political consciousness); (4) analyzing equal opportunities policy documents; (5) equality policies in the everyday world of universities; (6) academic trade union responses to equality policies; and (7) conclusions. (Contains approximately 325 references.) (DB)