Social Class and Higher Education

Research synthesis

Jacqueline StevensonLeeds Metropolitan University

Background and context1. ‘Massification of HE’: 1992 - end of the ‘binary divide’; x 2 number

of universities in England; number of entrants: 300,000 in the 1960s to 1.6 million by 1997

2. New Labour’s neo-liberal ‘modernising’ agenda - altered the system of financing universities and of individual student financial responsibilities for paying for HE

3. Simultaneous commitment to opening up access: NCIHE, 1997 - unequal rates of participation; early 1990s polytechnics comprised a smaller proportion of W-C students than ever with expansion greatest for M-Cs– “Education must be a force for opportunity and social justice, not for

the entrenchment of privilege. We must make certain that the opportunities that higher education brings are available to all those who have the potential to benefit from them, regardless of their background”( ‘The Future of Higher Education’ (DfES, 2003a, p.67)

– i.e. Widening participation not just increasing it

Why the emphasis on Class? Highly under-represented: Economic imperative vs. Social justice and social

mobility– ‘low rates of participation in HE among the lowest socio-economic groups

represent entrenched inequality and in economic terms a waste of human capital (HEFCE 2006, 122).

‘Moral panic’ – Emotive vision of WWCs, particularly boys and men, ‘in crisis’; (re)produced by

representations in the media; positioning white males as the new victims of institutional gender and racial discrimination and creating what has been called “white victimhood” (Gillborn & Kirton, 2000) - the latest, excluded ‘cultural’ minority, their plight blamed firmly on immigrants and people from BME communities.

– ... a fairly consistent message…white residents cannot get social housing because migrants and refugees have priority; white boys are failing in school because minority ethnic pupils are disproportionately allocated additional funding; white patients get reduced services at the hospital because the NHS can’t cope with pressures caused by migrant ‘health tourists;’ white workers’ wages are undercut by migrant workers who are prepared to work for less; and so on (Páll Sveinsson, 2009, p.5)

Focus of the review Decade of research literature, Access, participation, retention, success and non-participation in HE Undergraduate, rather than the postgraduate, sector and primarily on full-time

students undertaking bachelor degree programmes– Almost three-quarters of all HE entrants attend full-time undergraduate degree

programmes– The literature reviewed focuses primarily on young entrants to HEIs (although definitions

of ‘young’ are themselves somewhat contested)– Limitations in the available datasets encourage analysts to focus on new, young and full-

time students and to ignore non-participants– There are few studies exploring non-participation, or the experiences of post-graduate,

part-time or, for example, disabled students from low socio-economic groups. However, where possible we have included research relating to these groups.

Focuses on evidence relating to a UK context: drawing on research and reports that have applied a UK-wide remit, or data specific to the home nations

– Only limited data from a specifically Welsh or Northern Ireland context and what exists has tended to be on a small scale or more than 10 years old

Synthesis of findings Who is being researched?

– working-class - few from a wholly classed perspective: young people, adults, men, women; BME students

– Middle-class BME and White students noticeably absent (some studies have interviewed M-Cs as a comparison group), no research on ‘upper-class’ students

– Primarily full-time ‘on-campus’ (some studies looking at the relationship between social class and mode of attendance)

– Social class differentials at the postgraduate level is missing Definitions used in the research

– ‘Working-class student’ - low social-class groups, low-participation neighbourhoods, ‘first-generation’, low-income (‘poor’)

– Multiple determinants e.g. Moreau & Leathwood (2006) parental occupation; family social, economic and educational background; and/ or by explicitly stating their class identification; in other studies, students self-select (Tett, 2000) in recognition that social class is a subjectively experienced concept

– NB. policymakers often steer clear of the term ‘class’ in favour of ‘disadvantaged’ ‘hard-working families,’ ‘social exclusion’ and ‘social mobility’ (‘class truce’?)

– Problems….

Measuring ‘class’(social process vs. occupational position or status?)

National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC). Defines social class according to an individual’s occupation (25+) or parent’s occupation (under 25). Simplified version used by HESA and UCAS. Seven groups. 4- 7 + lowest

social class of those with less fixed patterns of employment is difficult to measure: Aimhigher partnerships in the South East (SE), NS-SEC 8 used for those who are retired, disabled students, full-time parents or carers, those on means-tested benefits and those who are unemployed - ‘long-term’ or otherwise

Large proportion of students for whom data is either missing or unclassifiable e.g. a quarter of students applying to HE through UCAS in 2007 were coded as ‘unknown’ (NAO, 2008)

Working, middle or upper class; hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in society that divides them into sets based on social or economic status

some students might clearly identify as WC or MC; others may not and may find it problematic to self-select either way

Both ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ are often used as homogenous terms to cover extremely diverse groups with the term ‘middle class’ is often used to mean ‘not working class’; lack of disaggregation

“Free School Meal (FSM) Eligibility” (perhaps a more accurate measure of child poverty)

FSM = imperfect proxy of low income or “workless” families - not all children eligible for FSM are registered as such; some children are ineligible who are equally poor; and there is variability in registering and recording eligibility..

‘First Generation’ Considered by some to be more important in determining access to HE than parental employment or financial status

interrelationship with social class is complex - many parents of today’s university entrants may be working in professional or managerial employment but may not have attended HE themselves in a time when HE remained an elite system

Geodemographics Combines geography with demographics and lifestyle information

Is a neighbourhood classification and not an individual or household classification

Data may be out of data (census)

Access Prevailing discourses

– Deficiency – Difference– Loss of identity– Blame

Access– HEFCE: 1) Increasing demand for HE and opportunities to access it; 2) offering

new opportunities for progression on vocational courses and for lifelong learning; 3) embedding widening participation in HEIs' corporate policy and practice - Aimhigher (18-30s), LLLNs, WPSAs

– Aimhigher. Criticism that the programme fails to live up to its social justice potential - Hatt et al.’s (2007) only one-third of the beneficiaries they analysed came from the most under-represented groups; the ‘lazy targeting’ of high-profile and relatively easy-to-reach ‘under-represented’ groups (McCaig & Bowers-Brown, 2007)

– OFFA: Callender (Times Higher Education Supplement, 2008) 40% of bursaries and scholarships awarded are not means-tested, whilst 25% of all bursaries are based exclusively on merit, with some HEIs using these as a way to attract the brightest students: awards vary significantly, with the Russell Group's average amounting to £1,791 a year, whilst the 20 or so lowest-ranked institutions offer an average of only £642 a year

Participation rates Gaps in data impact on the reliability of estimates of participation (NAO, 2008) Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR): official measure of participation;

allows the government to identify progress towards 50% of 18-30 year olds; only covers HE entrants up to the age of 30, and only if they remain engaged for at least six months; progress – slow but gap between the upper and lower socio-economic groups has narrowed though white W-C males are severely under-represented

The Full Time Young Participation by Socio-Economic Class (FYPSEC): number of 18-20 year-old English first-time participants F-T HE as a proportion of the same age population of England; progress - those from lower socio-economic backgrounds remain significantly under-represented with the proportion of 18-20 year-olds from lower socio-economic groups increasing since 2002 by less than 2% to 19% in 2006 (DfES, 2007).

HESA :information on student enrolments at all publicly funded HEIs in the UK, including mature and part-time students but NS-SEC of mature students or of part-time students is not available; progress - percentage of under 21s from low socio-economic backgrounds starting degrees fell from 29.8% to 29.4% in 2008.

UCAS :information on students on full-time undergraduate courses, contains a large and increasing number of students classified as ‘unknown’; progress - (Bolton, 2009) relatively little change up to 2007 and no noticeable impact in 2006, when variable fees were introduced but in 2008 the proportion of accepted UCAS applicants from NS-SEC groups 1 and 2 fell to their lowest levels and clear increases were evident in the proportion of students from NS-SEC groups 6 and 7,

Differences in participation The four countries of the UK: The highest proportion of entrants from lowest

socio-economic groups is in Northern Ireland followed by Wales, then Scotland and, finally, England. In contrast the lowest representation of entrants from higher managerial and professional occupations is in Northern Ireland (Osborne, 2006). Many of these differences parallel the differences in the social structures of the four countries rather than being a consequence of WP policies or interventions.

Subject groups: extremely variable; Bolton (2009) - NS-SEC group 1 over represented in medicine/ dentistry, languages and history/ philosophy; NS-SEC group 4 over-represented in veterinary science, agriculture architecture, building and planning

Different HEIs: The Sutton Trust Report (2004) children from independent schools account for 7% of the school population but for 39% of the entry to top universities; Gorard (2004): inequity in HE doesn’t occur within the admissions but are significantly less applications from W-C students to HE and to specific institutions for specific courses: low attainment

Barriers to participation Low attainment: Public Accounts Committee (2009): difference in participation

largely be explained by school attainment: two-thirds of those with five+ GCSEs are in HE by age 19 compared with 12% of those without; plus almost no differences in university acceptance rates by socio-economic background when prior attainment is taken into account

Fear of debt: W-Cs apply for vocational courses in ‘new’ subjects (i.e.: media, tourism, business, information technology); apply to universities with lower tuition fees, lower living costs and higher term-time employment opportunities (Forsyth & Furlong, 2003); consider HE to be ‘not for people like them’ (Archer and Hutchings, 2001)

W-C BME students: risk of academic failure; W-C Women: HE incompatible with role as mother; difficulties in arranging regular

childcare (Connor et al., 2001; Marks et al., 2003) W-C Men: concern and embarrassment about being unable to provide for their family

while studying (Marks et al., 2003) W-C adults: lack of any agency taking responsibility for advice and guidance; no

evidence of universities directly reaching out to adults potentially recruitable to higher education (Fuller et al, 2009)

Non-completion Causes are complex: DfES (Davies & Elias, 2003) – no direct link with social class but poor choice

of course, financial problems and personal issues; HESA data (not disaggregated by social class) students were least likely drop out from HEIs attended by the lowest percentage of students from low socio-economic groups

Previous academic achievement: The National Audit Office (2007) early leavers tend to have lower A-level grades

Financial issues: HESA - proportion of students in the UK who failed to complete their first year at university increased by 0.3% to 7.4% in 2006/7, following introduction of top-up fees; Furlong & Forsyth’s (2003) - poorer students more likely to drop out, but fear of debt and constant money worries were the influencing factors rather than the actual sums of money borrowed; Hatt et al (2005) - low-income students in receipt of bursaries were more likely to continue; Christie et al (2004) similar financial difficulties amongst both continuers and non-continuers - important factors were poor choice of course, limited social support networks, and a lack of ‘fit’

Lack of ‘fit’: Crozier et al (2008) – M-Cs have learned dispositions to fit the university context so ‘leaving students to it’ may result in continued inequalities; Longden (2004) - mismatch between the cultural capital possessed by an individual and that valued by the HEI can result in student drop-out: W-Cs are required to take steps to ‘fit in’; drop out as ‘resistance’ to the middle-class hegemony of the university’ (Quinn, 2004), or forced to ‘struggle’ (Reay et al., 2003).

Support: HEFCE (2006) - retention allocation often used for activities that support the whole student body; Thomas (2002): seven areas for supporting retention: 1) academic preparedness, 2) the academic experience (including assessment), 3) institutional expectations and commitment, 4) academic and social match, 5) finance and employment, 6) family support and commitments, and 7) university support services.

Success Little research: on degree attainment, post-graduation progression on to

postgraduate study or progression into employment; First Destinations survey doesn’t analyse activity post-graduation by social class (although it does do so by gender, age, ethnicity and disability)

Degree attainment: – Direct link: little evidence. Smith & Naylor ( 2001) a female student from Social

Class IIIM was 17% less likely to get a good degree than one from Social Class II; DfES (2007) as the IMD deprivation rank increases the probability of obtaining a better degree increases

– Indirect link: correlation between the university attended and subject studied, parental experience of HE and prior educational achievement at level 3(Purcell et al., 2005; DfES, 2007).CHERI ( 2005) clear evidence of a negative association between term-time working and average end-of-year marks and by final degree results, even after taking into account other factors; Forsyth & Furlong (2000, 2003) lower levels of confidence about ability to succeed in HE; anti-education culture, lack of local graduate employment; low educational aspiration amongst school staff, students and families; institutional habitus - ECU/HEA (2008) HEIs perceived social class as the second most significant cause of degree differential amongst BME students - second only to financial issues  

Implications: discussion

Policy implications Implications for stakeholders Implications for further research