Dr Colin McCaig is a Professor of Higher Education Policy in the Sheffield Institute of Education, with 20 years’ experience in education policy research. Colin’s research interests are in the area of inequalities of access to higher education which he approaches through critical analyses of policies concerning the marketisation of higher education. A policy analyst by background, Colin’s PhD thesis, Preparing for Government: Education policymaking in the Labour Party 1994-1999 (Department of Politics, University of Sheffield) was successfully defended in 2000. Colin also holds a Masters in Political Economy from the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield.

He has published widely in areas of education policy and has written over 30 research publications and forty commissioned research reports. Colin is currently co-editing a book ‘The Business of Widening Participation: policy, practice and culture’ (with Jon Rainford and Ruth Squire) to be published by Emerald Publishing in 2022. He also published a co-edited book on the impact of marketisation on equality of access to HE Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: A New Level Playing Field? for Palgrave (June 2018); and a single-authored book on the Higher Education and Research Act for Emerald Publishing entitled: The marketisation of English Higher Education: a policy analysis of risk-based system (September 2018).