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ACTION ON PARTICIPATION

The Action on Participation group sought to find examples of universities taking initiatives to increase participation from adults who could be defined as being socially excluded or in danger of social exclusion. It became quickly apparent however that not all partner countries shared the same definitions about the nature of social exclusion and, more importantly, shared the same sense of urgency about recognising the obvious structural disadvantage suffered by certain groups in all European societies. It appeared that the diversity of socio-economic and political contexts across the ALPINE countries meant different political or economic imperatives for tackling disadvantage of access and participation into higher education. It was judged necessary therefore to include an introductory paper to the case studies to sketch a brief sociological analysis of the link between poverty and social exclusion, whose "key characteristic arises from multiple layers of disadvantage and can lead to discrimination" (Powery et al 2001 p.12). The case studies therefore sought to find a commonality of social exclusion between the countries of Western, Central and Eastern Europe by identifying groups who had either been marginalised through the emergence of new and market-led economies -such as working-class men and young male offenders; or through migration and diverse ethnic origins.

Finally, a sub-section discusses the issues, and gives examples of, Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning -APEL (or Recognition of Prior Learning - RPL) (Validation de L' Experience-VAE in France) as a means to give social and institutional value for knowledge acquired outside formal educational institutions. In particular this section draws attention to what is possible for universities to achieve with some of the most discriminated against people in the UK, refugees and asylum seekers.