Chapter 8: Institutional Assumptions and Other Barriers to Systemic, Structural and Cultural Change in Higher Education

This chapter draws on the critical descriptions offered in Chapter 5 (Aaliyah), Chapter 6 (Andy) and Chapter 7 (Sadiya) to illustrate the role that universities currently play in constraining the educational imaginaries of refugee students. In bringing together the data from Chapters 5, 6 and 7 into dialogue with the literature on equity, diversity and inclusion in HE, the chapter outlines how the constraints on refugee students’ learning and opportunities are created at the level of institutional assumptions in four key areas: refugee students’ familiarity with the ways that Western educational systems work; deficit assumptions about refugee students’ aspirations for HE; refugee students’ familiarity and experience with academic language and literacies (particularly practices, expectations and conventions relating to assessment); and students’ transitions and educational journeys. In this chapter, we make the argument that these assumptions – borne out of obsolete beliefs about who our students are in the contemporary HE academy – work together to create exclusionary conditions for ‘non-traditional’ students, and this is especially the case for refugee students like Aaliyah, Andy and Sadiyah.