Higher education and economic inequality – victim or villain?

A Visiting Professor at UWL, Professor Brown will examine the relationship between economic inequality and higher education, where he will ask what role higher education plays in continued economic inequality. His lecture will outline ways in which the higher education sector can contribute to the reduction of the economic imbalance in the UK.

Professor Roger Brown said, ‘After climate change, rising economic inequality is the greatest challenge facing Western societies. In many ways higher education exemplifies the damage that inequality is doing to our societies but it could also be one of the keys to addressing it.’

Roger Brown is Emeritus Professor at Liverpool Hope University and a Visiting Professor at UWL, where he has also been a Governor since 2009. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of Southampton Solent University, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, Chief Executive of the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics and Secretary of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council. He has written a range of books on the Higher Education sector, his most recent being Everything for Sale? The Marketisation of UK Higher Education 1980-2012 (with Helen Carasso), which was published in 2013.