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Experience of higher education (HE) has come to characterise many contemporary political divisions, including those related to Brexit, Trump and coronavirus policy. However, the academic literature is unclear whether HE plays a causal role in changing peoples' political attitudes or is simply a proxy. Furthermore, in many contexts, there is limited descriptive evidence on whether students' political attitudes change during HE. This paper focuses on the UK, using data from the British Election Study, to make a twofold contribution. Firstly, the paper introduces recent political science theorising on the nature of contemporary political divisions, which has remained largely outside the HE literature to date. This theorising is illustrated through a cross-sectional analysis, comparing the political attitudes of those with and without experience of HE, showing that the former tend to be more left-leaning and less ethnocentric. Secondly, a longitudinal analysis is performed to assess how students' political attitudes change during their time in HE. While in HE, students tend to make small movements to the left and become less ethnocentric, representing approximately 20-33% of the overall division between those with and without experience of HE. These findings are interpreted through a critical realist lens--they evidence that HE "could" have a causal role to play in creating contemporary political divisions. However, to establish whether HE does play a causal role, further intensive research is needed to explore how particular aspects of HE might bring about these changes and how this varies for different students in different contexts.

Graduate outcomes are becoming increasingly prominent within higher education (HE) policy, driven by national governments keen to demonstrate 'value for money'. The majority of HE policy in this area uses narrow economic metrics, such as employment status and salary, often derived from national surveys of graduates. This paper uses critical realist philosophy to develop a set of foundational concepts (graduate functionings, graduate capabilities and graduate outcomes) that illuminate the key characteristics and mistakes of this HE policy. It is shown that the narrow economic metrics used in policy are graduate functionings not graduate outcomes--they describe how graduates function in the world, rather than how HE influences these functionings. Using graduate functionings to assess the quality and value of HE is an ontological mistake. This judges HE institutions by what graduates do, which may or may not be influenced by HE, rather than considering what HE institutions actually contribute and change. This means that HE policy risks producing inaccurate and misleading conclusions. The paper concludes by recommending how policy could adopt these foundational concepts to better assess the quality and value of HE, offering more appropriate accounts of how HE impacts graduates.

Higher education (HE) policymaking is increasingly concerned with graduate outcomes. Policies often use narrow economic metrics, such as employment rates and salaries, to set strategic goals for HE and assess 'value for money'. Despite this policy relevance, little attempt has been made to assess the academic literature in this area. The field's strengths and weaknesses, areas of focus and level of criticality are unknown, leaving us unable to judge its ability to inform policy. This paper addresses this gap using a novel two-phase scoping review method. Phase 1 assesses literature that explicitly uses the term 'graduate outcome', finding a field that is largely fragmented into subfields. Phase 2 then performs a series of 'top-level' scoping reviews on each sub-field and combines them to assess the 'overall' literature. This 'overall' literature is found to share HE policy's focus on economic graduate outcomes. While several well-developed non-economic subfields exist, such as critical thinking and lifelong learning, these are comparatively small. A limited proportion of the literature considers issues of inequality and other 'critical' topics. If research is to better inform policy in this area, it would be beneficial to develop a broader and more critical research programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergence is central to critical realism, but there has been little attempt to develop a systematic account of this concept within the tradition. Two notable exceptions are seen in the work of Dave Elder‐Vass and Tony Lawson. However, both face problems in responding to reductionist claims and accounting for downward causation. This paper proposes contextual emergence as a robust alternative that overcomes these issues and provides a better justification for critical realism's stratified worldview. Contextual emergence explains that while properties at a lower 'level' offer necessary conditions, for emergence to obtain, there must also be contingent conditions at a higher 'level'. This approach maintains many of critical realism's intuitions about emergence, providing a robust account of ontological stratification and downward causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the three domains of reality is widely used in empirical critical realist research. However, there has been little scrutiny of how the domains are conceptualized and what they contribute to critical realism and how they should be applied in empirical research. This paper involves four arguments. First, Tom Fryer and Cristián Navarrete argue that the three domains of reality are redundant, confusing, and unsupported by Bhaskar's theorizing. Second, Dave Elder-Vass argues that the three domains schema embodies a distinction between the actual and the non-actual real. Regardless of whether we call them domains we need to retain this distinction. Third, Tobin Nellhaus argues that there are several reasons to uphold the three domains, but 'the empirical' is flawed and must be enfolded within a more encompassing theory. Fourth, Ruth Groff argues that the metaphor of ontological stratification is a problem when readers take it literally, often misconstruing the actual metaphysical content that it is meant to capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This debate paper argues that the Office for Students (OfS) has adopted standards of evidence that are inappropriate. These standards offer a problematic typology of different evaluation types, present a flawed hierarchy, and over-prioritise experimental approaches. As the OfS uses these standards of evidence to guide the evaluation of widening participation (WP) activities, this risks misrepresenting the evidence base for different activities, and prioritising methods that may not be the most appropriate. The goal of developing explanations of how WP activities work in particular contexts requires a more nuanced approach to evaluation. Recommendations are made for future practice: the OfS should review its standards of evidence and there should be greater debate in this area, evaluation should assess how WP activities work in particular contexts, and practitioners should make use of theory-driven, qualitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thematic analysis (TA) is one of the most popular methods in social science. There are several different approaches to TA that hold different ontological commitments, ranging from positivistic coding reliability TA to constructivist reflexive TA. However, there has been less focus on developing an approach that is informed by critical realism, with the notable exception of Wiltshire and Ronkainen. The first part of this paper proposes a five-step critical realist approach to TA. This approach aims to produce nuanced causal explanations of events, countering the mistaken assumption that qualitative research cannot produce causal knowledge. The second part of the paper brings this critical realist approach to TA into conversation with three alternatives: coding reliability, reflexive, and Wiltshire and Ronkainen's approach. The approach to TA in this paper builds on the strengths of these alternatives, offering an accessible way to adopt a critical realist philosophical grounding when doing TA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]