Three stories of institutional differentiation: resource, mission and social inequalities in higher education

This paper explores the historical relationship between the of the UK HE system through sectorial diversification, of differentiation/convergence and (in)equalities since 1960s. It examines the extent to which the connections and between three stories of resource, mission and social might be influenced (alongside other forces) by emergence and crisis of successive socio-economic regimes. empirical analysis of the three types of differentiation and contrasts new historical data on funding, and qualifications for the whole system and its segments. The analysis shows that the ongoing between resource, mission and social differentiations exacerbated by the effect of the crises of 1973 and 2008 provoked their misalignment and the destabilisation of the of expansion started in the 1960s and the 1990s. This for a new social compromise to overcome the 2008 crisis which a new HE expansion based on a realignment of, rather a trade-off between the three dimensions of differentiation contribute. This realignment requires a reversal of the /private substitution of funding ensuring that a less resource differentiation reflects and drives fairer of mission differentiation or convergence rather than social inequalities.