Widening Access to Higher Education in India: Institutional Approaches

Widening Access to Higher Education in India: Institutional Approaches (WAHEI) was a 4-year research project starting in 2022 and finished June 2026, that drew on and furthered the reach and impact of the first Fair Chance Foundation (FCF) project ‘A Fair Chance for Education: Gendered Pathways to Educational Success in HaryanaLink opens in a new window’ (2017-21). The new project took a key finding from the first project which had significant potential for impact. This was the vital but under-utilised potential of faculty members in rural and semi-urban Higher Education (HE) institutions to have a positive effect on young peoples’ HE participation and their life chances. This project recognised the potential role of rural-serving state universities and government colleges based in rural and semi-urban areas as HE knowledge hubs and looked to strengthen their efforts in delivering on the equity and social justice agenda for HE in India.

The project focused on six states from the different regions of India, to provide a representative picture and field of influence for the project. The study was based on case studies of HEIs which included state universities and affiliated undergraduate colleges across six geographical zones (North, West, Central, East, South and North-East).

The project aimed to explore, consolidate and maximise the role of HEIs through state university and college faculty members and college principals in providing guidance on HE access/choice in the communities they served, to ensure that young people entering HE for the first time were making informed choices about their futures.