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BAME Identity at University
NEWS 11 BAME Identity at University
At university, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students often have a lesser sense of belonging compared to their white student counterparts undergoing the same experience. Universities are often known for being a hub of cultures, languages and races; as a place for the minds of students and academics around the world to come together. However, despite positive action for minority groups, there is still a growing sense that the BAME identity is perhaps under-represented within mainstream university life.
Tamara is in her second year of studying Liberal Arts at the University of Nottingham. Whilst she is from London, her ethnic background is Nigerian. She was asked if the BAME identity is well represented at university. She responded: “No. For some reason the ratio between BAME and white students is always disproportionate and it is not only discouraging, but also since you are the only one, you feel you have to represent your BAME identity and perform better to prove that more students like you can take these opportunities too.”.
Universities UK and National Union Schools recently announced a 13% attainment gap between White UK students and BAME UK students receiving a first or an upper second-class degree at universities between 2017-18. Following calls for university-wide change, a re port involving 99 universities in total, released plans to make significant progress to narrow this gap. The universities regular, the Office for Students, has announced that they aim to close the attainment gap by 2024-25.
In addition, BAME staff are under-represented in senior academic and university leadership roles. Of 19,000 people employed as professors in the UK, only 400 are BAME women. Baroness Valerie Amos, director of SOAS University of London who co-led the report, noted: “Even when BAME students overcome the hurdles that prevent them getting to university in the first place, they do not have an equal chance at succeeding. We are not operating a level playing field”.
Since July 2017, the University of Nottingham has been operating a BAME Attainment Gap Initiative. With this, they have implemented measures to help address Nottingham-specific issues. They also found that the attainment gap widens between academic years, that student societies are essential in bringing together people of the same race and region, and that student experiences vary between the different campuses. The university has also set up a ‘Steering Group’, which meets termly to give updates to the Student Experiences Committee and has introduced training to tackle unconscious bias. Although the current end date of the project is July 2020, it has found that having conversations about this topic was challenging and that ‘many white staff are defensive and deeply uncomfortable about discussions of privilege and race’. Safa Shahid Page Design by Natasha Phang-Lee Photos courtesy of Google Images
