Higher Education and Social Class

Issues of Exclusion and Inclusion

Louise Archer, Merryn Hutchings, Alistair Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134474912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Working class groups have historically been excluded from participation in higher education. Past decades have seen an expansion of the system towards a more inclusive higher education, but participation among people from working class groups has remained persistently low. Is higher education unattractive for these groups or are the institutions acting to exclude them?
This thought-provoking and revealing book examines the many factors and reasons why working class groups are under-represented in higher education. In particular, the book addresses issues around differential access to information about university, the value of higher education to working class groups, the costs of participating and the propensity to participate. Issues of gender and ethnicity are also explored and questions are raised for those who are currently involved in 'widening participation' projects and initiatives. A unique feature of the book is that its findings are drawn from an innovative study where the views of both working class participants and non-participants in higher education were explored.
This book will be of interest to students of social policy, educational studies and sociology of education at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Academics, researchers and policy makers nationally and internationally will also find it valuable.

Chapter 1
Social class and higher education

Louise Archer

Social class has long been a central theme within educational and sociological theorizing, research and analysis. Within sociology, Edgell (1993) has suggested that social class is ‘the most widely used concept’ although it has undergone fluctuating periods of being in turn either prioritized or dismissed as irrelevant. While the salience of social class may rise and fall within policy and academic discourses, surveys (for example Hudson and Williams 1989) have suggested that recent years have witnessed increases in the gap between broad sections of the population, whohave differential access tomoney, resources, qualifications, life chances and health. As will be outlined later in this chapter, education has always been centrally positioned within sociological theories of class re/production, playing an important role in ensuring either the reproduction of (middleclass) privileges or (working-class) disadvantages.

Within educational research, issues of social class have been predominantly addressedinrelationtothe compulsory schooling context, where it has been noted that working-class children tend to experience persistently lower rates of attainment and are less likely to follow routes into post-compulsory education. For example, Bates and Riseborough (1993) detail how young people from different social classes do not attend the same types of educational institution, nor do they gain similar levels of qualifications and results, nor follow comparable post-16 routes. They argue that, at all stages within the educational journey, young working-class people experience poorer conditions, receive fewer resources, study for less prestigious qualifications and follow lower-status trajectories. As detailed in Chapters 2 and 3, concerns around class inequalities in access, retention and attainment within higher education have gained in importance in recent years. Internationally, the historical dominance of higher education by better-off socio-economic groups has also become a major cause for concern in the majority of industrialized countries. The intractability of this problem is evidenced by the relatively small changes in working-class participation rates following the mass expansion of higher education in Britain (see Chapters 2 and 3) and in the wake of numerous initiatives and schemes aimed at widening participation.

Various theories and perspectives have attempted to account for working- class groups’ generally lower levels of attainment and rates of participation in post-compulsory education, but there remains little consensus as to how to theorize the concept of social class and its relationship to education. It could be asked, however, why it is necessary to attempt to theorize social class and higher education. This question is particularly pertinent because many practical, widening participation strategies could be classed as ‘atheoretical’ (Archer, Hutchings and Leathwood 2001) in their approaches. We would answer this question by suggesting that the ways in which ‘social class’ and ‘higher education’ are conceptualized will have important implications for how research concerned with ‘widening participation’ is imagined and undertaken. Taken-for-granted assumptions impact upon the solutions advocated and policy recommendations made within particular research projects because the theoretical position adopted by a researcher will frame the terms of his or her investigation (such as the methods utilized, the relationships selected for analysis, etc.). Thus the way in which social class is understood within research on higher education and widening participation is grounded within the researcher’s views about the structure of society. This determines the formulation of research questions, the ways in which issues are understood and the subsequent range of recommendations advocated. Questions around class inequalities (or ‘bias’ in Williamson’s words) within higher education are therefore conceptual issues:

Since answers to them presuppose some further theoretical elaboration about the nature of class inequalities and the way in which these can be related to the structure and functioning of higher education.

(Williamson 1981: 18)

For example, depending upon one’s theorizations of social class and higher education, a research project may choose to problematize and investigate widening participation as an issue of either working-class attitudes and aspirations, or institutional cultures within higher education.

This chapter will outline some of the main theoretical approaches that might be drawn on to conceptualize the relationship between social class and higher education. These approaches are organized into two main sections. The first addresses what might be characterized ‘categorical’ (Williamson 1981), ‘modernist’ (Bradley 1996) or ‘quantitative’ (Crompton 1993) approaches. This section largely reviews ‘grand theories’ and addresses the ways in which such approaches define class in predominantly ‘objective’, occupational terms. The second section covers what might be characterized as ‘process’ (Williamson 1981), ‘postmodern’ (Bradley 1996) or ‘qualitative’ (Crompton 1993) approaches. This section addresses ‘themes’ (rather than large-scale theories) in which social class has been conceptualized as subjective and fluid, produced within interactions between social structures and identities. The final part of the chapter outlines the theoretical approach used within this book.

Categorical and modernist approaches

Traditionally, the treatment of social class within educational and sociological research has been dominated by modernist and ‘grand’ theories, in which class is conceptualized categorically, as comprising groups of people who share particular socio-economic characteristics which distinguish them from other groups (Williamson 1981). Researchers within this tradition have tended to quantitatively study class structures and patterns (Crompton 1993) and share a perception of class as objectively definable and largely fixed/unchanging. We begin by summarizing how such approaches frame the relationship between social class and (higher) education, drawing upon Bradley’s (1996) comprehensive work which details the development of sociological literature in relation to social class. The chapter also discusses some of the benefits and limitations of defining social class from categorical/ modernist perspectives within widening participation research.

As Bradley (1996) discusses, neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian theorists differ in how they theorize social class, but they share an understanding of capitalist societies as stratified by class, in which the ruling class achieves dominance over the working class through control of property, production and the market. Marx (1976) emphasized the role of alienation and exploitation in the production and maintenance of capitalist power relations, while Weber (1938) emphasized that ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘rationalization’ were not only important in producing capitalist societies, but were central to the formation of the middle classes.

Although largely missing from Marx and Weber’s original theorizations, the role of the education system has subsequently been stressed by theorists such as Althusser (1971), who posited that, within capitalist society, education is an apparatus of the state, attempting to reproduce the conditions of capitalist production. American neo-Marxists Bowles and Gintis (1976) also proposed that education acts as a class channel, demonstrated through their concept of the ‘correspondence principle’. They suggested that although schools may claim to promote equal opportunities for all, they reproduce a capitalist division of labour, preparing children for class-determined careers in the labour market.

These accounts primarily addressed the relationship between social class and compulsory education, but they can be extended to HE, where they can be used to explain working-class under-representation in higher education as a result of the differential channelling of working-class and middle-class children within the school system. From this perspective, differential participation rates appear to be an almost inevitable feature of capitalism; thus for the aim of substantially widened participation in HE to occur, there will need to be fundamental changes within the structure of society. These accounts do not, however, explain the participation (albeit in low numbers) of working-class students. Nor do these theories adequately explain how, and why, some changes in participation rates have occurred over time or why some working-class groups (e.g. black women) appear to participate in greater numbers than others, such as black men (cf. Chapter 9).

Bradley (1996) also documents the thinking of functionalist theorists who have similarly regarded education as a crucial element within the reproduction of class differences. Whereas Marxist and Weberian theorists have emphasized the inequalities inherent within this process of reproducing class differences, functionalist theorists view education as part of a meritocratic sorting process, determining the best people for particular jobs and roles in society. Functionalists have however been criticized for presenting the education system in a legitimating role which hides structural inequalities to the extent that ‘upper-class life has been made to look like a reward for educational success and working class life as a punishment for laziness and a lack of ability’ (Steven 1983: 291, cited in Bradley 1996: 184). Functionalism echoes Darwinianism in its assumptions that ‘natural selection’ defines social class within industrialized societies. Applied to an higher-education context, functionalist theories would suggest that low rates of participation among working-class groups are related to lower rates of intelligence, ability and/or application, with the more talented working-class individuals reaching university through their own merit. Thus unequal participation rates are not treated as a social problem requiring action, but as a natural aspect of a functioning society. Indeed, notions of a finite, and stratified, ‘natural pool of ability’ in relation to higher-education participation have persisted from the 1960s to the present day. However, as Bradley (1996) and others have suggested, functionalist theories can be criticized for being simplistic in their assumptions of meritocratic determinism in the face of a wealth of evidence pointing to structural inequalities such as racism, sexism and classism (discussed later in this chapter). Functionalist theories can also be criticized for overlooking differential patterns of participation between social groups due to their focus upon individual differences. And yet despite these substantial criticisms of functionalist theories, key functionalist themes (such as an unproblematized notion of meritocracy and the assumption that the working-class groups are under-represented in HE due to lower ability levels) underpin some of the more right-wing viewpoints offered within current widening participation debates.

An alternative perspective is offered by ‘class–culture paradigm’ theorists (Byrne et al. 1975), who argue that social classes can be distinguished by their differing ‘cultures’ which play a role in reproducing particular class positions. For example, Williamson (1981) cites Kelsall, Poole and Kuhn (1972), who suggested that in 1960, working-class students were differentiated from their non-participating peers through their family and educational characteristics. They identified parental encouragement as the key factor determining participation and found that middle-class families were more likely to encourage their children to progress in post-compulsory education. As Edwards and Roberts (1980) also explained, differential class participation rates in HE were regarded as resulting from differential valuing of HE between social classes and contrasting class perceptions regarding the ‘cultural accessibility’ of higher education. Indeed, this view seems to still have some currency, as it appears to underpin various widening participation initiatives which are aimed at ‘raising aspirations’, ‘increasing awareness’ of HE and challenging ‘cultures of non-participation’ among under-represented groups (for example CVCP 1998). But, as Williamson (1981: 29) notes, the perspective is not unproblematic because ‘what such an explanation does is [to] locate the problem [of non-participation] in an aspect of the family or school experience of different groups of children’. Notwithstanding the influence of classcultural theories upon widening participation practice, recently there have been shifts away from ‘cultural’ explanations towards an emphasis on the role of school/education institutional processes (Foster et al. 1996: 139) and towards more nuanced, complex accounts of ‘culture’ (see later in this chapter). As Williamson argues, this shift may relate to class– culture explanations’ inability to explain why some working-class families place more value on HE and/or perceive it as more, or less, accessible than others.

Defining social class within modernist/categorical approaches

Although categorical approaches to defining class are widely used, criticisms have been made of such approaches because ‘social class categories are notoriously problematic’ (Foster et al. 1996: 53). Modernist/categorical approaches define social class primarily in terms of occupation. Occupational classificatory models and scales continue to be influential today, particularly within official agencies, but there is no overall consensus on how to define social class categories and the occupational criteria are being constantly revised. For example, in November 1998 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced the government’s new social classification, the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS SEC), which is based on employment conditions and relations and replaces the occupation-based Registrar General’s classification system.

The Registrar General’s classification system, until recently the main official tool, grouped the population into six classes on the basis of occupation, grouped in terms of skill levels (I, Professional, II Managerial and technical IIIN Skilled non-manual, IIIm Skilled manual, IV Partly skilled, V Unskilled). A similar social grade system is used by the Market Research Society (A, B, C1, C2, D, E). The new NS SEC has seven main classes, with a ‘long version’ of 30 categories. The seven main categories are:

1. Higher managerial and professional occupations
   1. Employers and managers in larger organizations
   2. Higher professionals
2. Lower managerial and professional occupations
3. Intermediate occupations
4. Small employers and own-account workers
5. Lower supervisory, craft and related
6. Semi-routine occupations
7. Routine occupations.

Widening participation policy and research have inevitably made use of both the Registrar General’s and the Market Research Society classificatory systems. The Dearing Report, for example, uses the Registrar General’s system, highlighting the low proportions of social class IV and V students who participate in higher education. In our own research, respondents to the MORI survey were identified as belonging to socio-economic groups C1-E. More recently, HESA and UCAS have begun to classify students in terms of the areas in which they live, using geodemographic profiles (such as MOSAIC).

Inevitably, there are inherent problems within all these approaches to defining the social class of students (and non-participants). In determining the social class of universities’ student intake, there are various difficulties faced by researchers using occupational classifications. For example, a decision must be made as to when, and whether, to assign a student’s social class according to their own job(s) or that of their parent(s). Currently UCAS uses the age of 21 as a cut-off point; students younger than 21 are classified in terms of their parents’ occupations and students over 21 are judged on the basis of their own reported occupation. This method can be problematic in a modern society where people may frequently change job and/or may not live in ‘traditional’ households. As feminists such as Walkerdine et al. (1999) have also emphasized, occupational classificatory models have largely been formulated from a male norm and have particular difficulty defining women’s social class positions. Within families, women and menmay engage in differently classed employment, complicating efforts to determine a family’s social class position. For example, Bradley (1996) cites Braverman (1974) who has suggested that in America a typical working-class couple might comprise a man who works in a factory and a woman who works as a clerk, representing jobs from contrasting classifications.

The move towards identifying students and non-participating groups through geodemographic profiling has been similarly problematic. Although sensitive to the level of an electoral ward (approximately 500 people), the characterization of residential areas can be criticized as being too broad to adequately account for many inner city and urban areas, where there is intense variation of population and housing within very small geographical areas.

Thus conceptualizations of social class which rest on economic factors and employment status are problematic for a number of reasons, not least because of the gendered assumptions upon which such classifications have traditionally been built, the assumptions of homogeneity within class groups, and the changed industrial and labour scene at the start of the twenty-first century (Walkerdine et al. 1999). More broadly, there have been serious criticisms of categorical/ positivistic approaches to social class from postmodern and postructuralist perspectives, which contest the fundamental epistemological basis of the grand theories. These competing approaches have argued that social class cannot be reduced to occupation and that class positions are not homogenous or easily quantifiable. Postmodern theorists have drawn attention instead to how class interacts with other inequalities (such as gender and ‘race’) and is a ‘lived’ process that is inextricably tied to ‘identity’. Thus it has been argued that categorical concepts of class are lacking because they ‘make no reference to questions of identity, or consciousness, or feelings of solidarity’ (Williamson 1981: 19). While some, such as Calvert (1982), have argued that the concept of class is so problematic it should be discarded, the following section details some of the attempts made through postmodern and poststructuralist, ‘class as process’ approaches to theorize a useable concept of social class.

‘Class as process’ approaches

Since the 1970s postmodern and poststructuralisttheories have provided a substantial challenge to previous, more positivistic ways of conceptualizing social class within education and sociology. There are numerous postmodern and poststructuralist approaches within sociological theorizing, espousing differing epistemological and ontological conceptualizations (Burman and Parker 1993). It is therefore important to note that although the terms ‘poststructuralist’ or ‘postmodern’ theory imply a discernible theoretical field, they encompass a varied bundle of approaches (Bradley 1996) that, while opposing ‘grand’, macro-level theories, do not belong to a coherent movement of work. In this chapter, the term ‘postmodern’ is used in the broadest possible sense to encompass poststructuralist theories. Postmodern theorists attempt micro-level analyses, attending to particular aspects of social class within defined, local boundaries. Some of the approaches detailed below could be identified as falling within broad theoretical movements and/or academic disciplines (such as feminism, sociology of education, cultural studies), but they broadly share a conceptual stance that understands working-class participation in higher education as constituted by a complex combination of social, structural, economic and cultural factors and enacted through material and discursive inequalities.

Broadly speaking, postmodern theorists draw upon qualitative techniques to explore class formation and consciousness by analysing and deconstructing social categories and concepts (Bradley 1996). Such approaches assume that social ‘reality’ is not an objective fact or ‘real’, but is socially, discursively constructed. Thus, postmodern approaches understand social class positions, differences and inequalities as socially constructed processes. Williamson thus argues for the importance of deconstructing the linguistic categories associated with HE in order to understand class inequalities in higher education:

To gain any understanding of a tradition of higher education…it is vital to go beyond the terms in which it understands itself. Conventional notions of ability, excellence, scholarship or ‘the good mind’ have to be relativized … questions of class cannot really be discussed in an atmosphere of disinterested objectivity for the questions themselves arise out of a larger political problematic.

(Williamson 1981: 20)

Chapters 2 and 3 provide a historical overview to the political and policy context within whic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Social class and higher education
• Chapter 2: Higher education and social access
• Chapter 3: Access to higher education
• Chapter 4: Participation and potential participation in UK higher education
• Chapter 5: Information, advice and cultural discourses of higher education
• Chapter 6: The ‘value’ of higher education
• Chapter 7: Entry routes to higher education
• Chapter 8: Financial barriers to participation
• Chapter 9: Identities, inequalities and higher education
• Chapter 10: Widening participation in higher education
• Glossary
• Bibliography