**1. Introduction**

Higher education participation rates have reached a record high across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Young adults with degree-level qualifications constituted 48% of 25–34-year-olds in 2021 and reached rates of 69% in Korea and 66% in Canada. Despite this expansion across the OECD, a low-SES young person is less than one-half as likely to be in higher education compared with the proportion of low-SES families in the population. This compares with a high-SES young person, who is almost twice as likely to be in higher education [1]. The disparity in academic achievement between students from low-SES and high-SES backgrounds—the 'socio-economic achievement gap'—is documented across a wide range of countries, and there is evidence it has increased in the last 50 years [2].

The economic returns of a higher education remain high. OECD evidence shows that, for young people, the higher their educational attainment at the start of the last economic crisis, the more likely they were to be employed throughout the Great Recession [3]. In Ireland, graduates hold almost a half of all jobs, although they comprise only one-third of the working age population, and their employment rate is 80%, against a 61% rate for the population at large [4]. Higher education confers other social and cultural returns, including better health, longer life expectancy and greater life satisfaction. Graduates are also more likely to participate in society through voting and volunteering [5].

While progression to higher education is the outcome of complex, interwoven factors both within and outside of school, many universities across the OECD have established targeted programs to tackled inequalities in higher education progression. This article is a comparative case study of the impact of two such programs: Trinity College Dublin (Trinity Access Progrmames/TAP), Ireland and The University of Oxford (Lady Margaret Hall Foundation Year/LMH FY), UK. The programs were collaborative developments, as examples of the potential of learning and adaptation across geographical contexts.

**Citation:** Hannon, C. A Human Capability Perspective on the Progression of Low-SES Students to Higher Education in Ireland and the UK. *Educ. Sci.* **2023**, *13*, 409. https:// doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040409

Academic Editors: Edward P. St. John, Luxi Chen, Zachary Taylor, Lijing Yang and Chen Wang

Received: 30 January 2023 Revised: 6 April 2023 Accepted: 13 April 2023 Published: 18 April 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

This article draws on the capability approach as the evaluative lens used to explore the qualitative outcomes of both programs. It poses two questions: (a) How did the admissions processes in both universities change to target low-SES students? (b) How do social and academic support services for low-SES students, provided by two universities, contribute to the development of student capabilities?

The article begins with an overview of 'widening participation' programs to improve access to higher education by low-SES groups in the UK and Ireland. It explores how the admissions systems within both universities were adapted to target low-SES students. It explains the materials and methods used in evaluating the two programs. It continues with an explanation of the emergent capabilities in low-SES students in both programs. Finally, it considers the contribution of the capability approach as an evaluative lens and the benefits of cross-national collaboration in tackling low-SES student higher education progression.
