Abstract
In this reflection, we draw on our findings, experiences, and recommendations from supporting admissions processes for refugees and asylum seekers into higher education across universities in Uganda, Edinburgh, and Oxford. We reflect on the practical, institutional, and systemic barriers that displaced populations face in gaining admission to universities (beyond disrupted secondary schooling and a dearth of financing and scholarship options, which are most often discussed in this context), and detail what factors we saw as key to enabling and driving institutional change in these spaces. We share learnings, successes, and failures from our attempts to address these challenges across multiple different institutional environments in the hope that these may prove instructive for similar initiatives elsewhere, as well as how we might begin to build a consensus around the need for these shifts in often ‘refugee blind’, sometimes resistant, sites of higher education.