Chapter 1. Diversity and differentiation, equity and equality in a marketised higher education system; Marion Bowl -- Chapter 2. International policies for higher education and their national variants: reconciling equality and marketisation in national policy texts; Marion Bowl -- Chapter 3. English Higher Education: widening participation and the historical context for system differentiation; Colin McCaig -- Chapter 4. System differentiation in England: the imposition of supply and demand; Colin McCaig -- Chapter 5. Can 'alternative providers' really improve equality of opportunity for students entering higher education?; G.R Evans -- Chapter 6. Institutional diversification and student diversity in English higher education; Anne-Marie Bathmaker and Marion Bowl -- Chapter 7. Marketisation, institutional stratification and differentiated pedagogic approaches; Jacqueline Stevenson, Pauline Whelan and Penny-Jane Burke -- Chapter 8. Measurement imperatives and their impact: academic staff narratives on riding the metric tide; Carol Taylor, Jean Harris-Evans, Iain Garner, Damien Fitzgerald and Manuel Madriaga -- Chapter 9. Conceptualising equality, equity and differentiation in marketised higher education: fractures and fault-lines in the neoliberal imaginary; Colin McCaig, Marion Bowl and Jonathan Hughes.

This edited collection demonstrates how discourses and practices associated with marketisation, differentiation and equality are manifested in UK higher education today. Uniting leading scholars in higher education and equality in England, the contributors and editors expose the contradictions arising from the tension between aims for increased equality and an increasingly marketised higher education. As the authors seek to reveal both the intended and unintended consequences of the intensified marketisation of the sector, they critically examine the implications of these changes. In doing so, they reveal the ways in which institutional policy and discourse are involved in masking the contradictions between an educational marketplace and education as a vehicle for advancing equality and social justice. This pioneering volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of higher education in England, education policy and the marketisation of higher education, as well as policy makers and practitioners.