Equity in student outcomes is a concern of many higher education (HE) systems around the world. In the UK, the Ethnicity Degree Awarding Gap (EDAG) has been a persistent problem in HE for many years (Advance HE, 2023). EDAG refers to the difference in rates of achieving a good undergraduate degree, i.e., a first or upper-second class degree among various ethnic and/or racial groups. Usually, the comparison is between UK domiciled white students versus Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students (BAME, a contested term, yet often used in statistics and policy language). As a whole, white students tend to do better than minority racialised students, with 83.0% of White students graduating in 2021/22 receiving a good class degree, and only 72.3% of BAME students achieving the same, a gap of 10.7 percentage points (ppts) (Advance HE, 2023). 

The EDAG has gained significance in policy and research, particularly as, beyond social justice arguments, a good class degree can lead to good employment, facilitate access to further education and form the basis for the academic pipeline (i.e., enabling progression into academic careers). In 2018 the Office for Students (OfS), the sector regulator for English HE, set ambitious targets for universities to close what the OfS refers to as an ‘unexplained’ gap between white and Black students by 2024/25 and the absolute gap, which includes ‘structural and unexplained factors’ by 2030/31 (OfS, 2018, p. 4). By structural factors the OfS means ‘entry qualification, subject of study, age of students, and the provider at which a student studies’, while the ‘unexplained factors’ are those that cannot be explained by the above (OfS, 2018, p. 12). Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been explicating their work and targets for closing the EDAG in Access and Participation Plans (APPs). APPs are documents that the OfS requires HEIs to produce as part of their condition for registration as an HE provider in England, where they demonstrate how they will guarantee equality of opportunities for students.  

The EDAG has been described as a ‘wicked problem’, one which is multi-faceted and difficult to tackle and requires concerted efforts to address (Shakir, 2024). While the literature on the topic has flourished in recent years, it has yet to translate into closing the gap fully. This has led us to interrogate the evidence base for what works in closing the EDAG, by undertaking three-part desk-based research.

First, we conducted a systematic literature review of academic literature (SLR) published between 2015 and 2025. Out of over 1000 papers returned through three search engines, we found that only 19 provided evidence of impact of interventions on closing the EDAG. Then, we interrogated research reports from 74 sector bodies and government agencies. This returned only 3 reports that provided evidence of impact. Finally, we conducted quantitative analysis on nationwide publicly available data sets. This included (1) combining data from the Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education’s (TASO) analysis of EDAG interventions within APPs (Andrews et al., 2023) and awarding gaps from OfS’ APP data dashboards (OfS, 2024, 2025) for which we ran a backward regression, and (2) performing a time series analysis using exponential smoothing on overall yearly EDAG data from 2003/04 to 2021/22 (Advance HE, 2023) to predict the size of EDAG by 2030.

The findings highlight that as a sector, we do not really know what works effectively in closing the EDAG. The results from SLR provide mixed results at best, with many academic papers having low sample sizes and/or lacking robust statistical calculations. Grey literature often makes big claims, suggesting frameworks that garner a lot of attention, but that actually seem to be based on weak data. Our quantitative analysis complicates this picture even more. Instead of finding interventions that help close the gap, our statistical modelling revealed approaches that correlate with making it worse. The large volatility of the gap year-on-year suggests that many institutions cannot have any certainty as to which of their approaches are effective. The above aligns with the notion of the gap as a ‘wicked problem’ (Shakir, 2024). This is why whole-institution approaches may be successful. However, there is no certainty that the same approach will work in different contexts (TASO, 2022). Additionally, as Austen (2025) argues, the sector is ‘stuck’ on conceptualising EDAG work through ‘interventions’, rather than more holistic approaches. Thus, evaluations may need to move beyond the narrow focus on what works and include what does not work, why approaches fail or succeed, including the impact of wider contexts (institutional, political, situational, etc.). Such evaluations should also increase in scale, providing sector-comprehensive comparisons between institutions. While it is impossible to predict the future with a large degree of certainty, the data from our time series analysis suggests that the OfS target of closing the gap by 2030 will not be achieved if things continue the way they are. A drastic change in policy and actions is required, but this can only happen with robust data. Our paper indicates the direction in which such data explorations should go.

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