Higher Education and Social Inequalities

University Admissions, Experiences, and Outcomes

Richard Waller, Nicola Ingram, Michael Ward, Richard Waller, Nicola Ingram, Michael Ward, Richard Waller, Nicola Ingram, Michael R.M. Ward

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315449708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

A university education has long been seen as the gateway to upward social mobility for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and as a way of reproducing social advantage for the better off. With the number of young people from the very highest socio-economic groups entering university in the UK having effectively been at saturation point for several decades, the expansion witnessed in participation rates over the last few decades has largely been achieved by a modest broadening of the base of the undergraduate population in terms of both social class and ethnic diversity.

However, a growing body of evidence exists in the continuation of unequal graduate outcomes. This can be seen in terms of employment trajectories in the UK. The issue of just who enjoys access to which university, and the experiences and outcomes of graduates from different institutions remain central to questions of social justice, notably higher education's contribution to social mobility and to the reproduction of social inequality.

This collection of contemporary original writings explores these issues in a range of specific contexts, and through employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches. The relationship between higher education and social mobility has probably never been under closer scrutiny. This volume will appeal to academics, policy makers, and commentators alike. Higher Education and Social Inequalities is an important contribution to the public and academic debate.

Part I
Getting in: higher education access and participation

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Chapter 1
Admissions, adaptations, and anxieties

Social class inside and outside the elite university

Susan Coulson, Lisa Garforth, Geoff Payne and Emily Wastell

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Introduction

Social mobility, student diversity and fair access to universities are important issues in current UK public policy debate, and rarely out of the news (Payne, 2017). From the inside, however, it can feel that Higher Education Institutions (‘HEIs’) are failing to recognise how academic experiences and identities are shaped by social class. The sector is apparently convulsed with concern about educational inequality especially in the self-styled ‘elite’, research-oriented universities such as Oxford, Cambridge or the Russell Group (Russell Group, 2016), whose high status and marketing skills give them a predominant position in Higher Education (‘HE’) funding (Boliver, 2015). But is the sector in fact neglecting questions of social class, and perhaps even contributing to the continuation of classed inequalities? This chapter is rooted in a growing discomfort about how our own roles – as teachers, tutors, admissions and exams officers in several Russell Group universities – might contribute to the reproduction of, and silence about, classed HE experiences. It explores how attention to unequal educational opportunities and fair access are concentrated almost exclusively at the points of application and admission.

We begin by examining contemporary discursive constructions of fair access in the language of policy and in the formal symbols used on university application forms. This demonstrates that admissions procedures deal with issues of biography, schooling and personal identity largely without reference to ‘class’. In the second part, interview data from a small sample of Third Year undergraduates shed light on the different experiences of those from public and state schools. We show how university networks, particularly friendships, impact on academic performance in ways that consolidate class identities and experience. Data from participants in a supported entry scheme for ‘less advantaged’ students is addressed in the third part. Here we explore non-traditional students’ experiences of not fitting in. Juxtaposing these different aspects of one selective HE institution, our discussion highlights a difficult tension: while students’ experiences and even their academic progress are deeply shaped by class, it is rarely acknowledged beyond admissions processes, which themselves work to separate students’ achievements and identities from their classed backgrounds.

Our analysis of these textual and interview data is informed by a growing and increasingly nuanced body of Bourdieusian research and theorising about higher education (see Reay et al., 2001; Archer et al., 2003; Reay, 2006; Archer, 2007; Reay et al., 2009, 2010; Bathmaker et al., 2013; Loveday, 2015). This work offers powerful accounts of how social, economic and cultural capitals shape choices, experiences and outcomes in the HE field. Bourdieu’s notion of the classed habitus (1984) facilitates the exploration of how working-class and non-white students choose universities and experience the HE system. It highlights how non-traditional students come to university with dispositions, habits, and preferences that leave them feeling they do not fit in, and explains why many feel uncomfortable in, or alienated from, elite institutions. Bourdieu’s notion of field (1984) helps us to understand universities as classed institutions that reproduce wider classed structures, normalising and neutralising privilege.

By highlighting tensions between official policies to widen participation/fair access in elite universities, and sociological questions of classed experiences and identities, we demonstrate that current admissions processes and supported-entry schemes in Russell Group universities tend to treat socio-economic background as contingent and separable from the applicant. This amounts to a denial of the continuing relevance of students’ classed identities and experiences at university. It enables universities to continue to operate as classed institutions which normalise high levels of cultural capital and educational privilege, and fail to attend to the complexities of working-class students’ lived experiences once they are inside the university.

Getting in: (not) doing class in UK university admissions

Since 2012, the replacement of the government block grant in England and Wales by increased student fees has contributed to growing concern about diversity of HE participation (Sutton Trust, 2013). This has led to greater scrutiny of universities’ mechanisms for ensuring ‘fair access’. All universities are expected to ensure their selection policies do not discriminate against qualified applicants on grounds of race, gender, poverty or origin. At the same time, however, increased competition for students has exacerbated distinctions between types of universities. In a period of rapid HE change, the Russell Group promotes its 24 members as high status, research-oriented institutions, whereas the 35 ‘post-1992’ or ‘new’ universities formed from former Polytechnics and Scottish Central Institutions tend to emphasise their direct relevance to employment. This trait is even more pronounced among the similar number of former colleges more recently designated as universities. Higher levels of applications to the ‘elite’ universities mean that they can be more selective about their intakes, imposing (in most but not all subject areas) a ‘higher tariff’ entry requirement whereby students require the strongest A level grades or equivalent to enter (Graham, 2010; Scott, 2015).

In competitive contexts, university marketing departments and academic departments increasingly treat tariff levels as an indicator of the quality of the university and its programmes. University guides and league tables routinely use entry qualifications as a significant factor in how they rank UK universities (for just one example, see the Complete University Guide ranking methodology: www­.th­eco­mpl­ete­uni­ver­sit­ygu­ide­.co­.uk­/le­agu­e-tables/methodology/). There is a wealth of evidence, however, that performance at A level is closely associated with differential educational opportunity and family background (e.g. Sutton Trust 2008, 2010, 2014; Higher Education Funding Council for England [HEFCE], 2014; Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission [SMCPC], 2015) and that A level performance is only loosely related to degree-level performance (e.g. HEFCE, 2014). It is here that commitments to widening participation can come into tension with ‘institutional culture(s) based on academic excellence’ (Bravenboer, 2012: 122) and ‘fair access’ may come to refer narrowly to selection among those pupils with the best qualifications: ‘As one prospectus states “the doors of this University are open to all students with the highest intellectual potential to succeed”’ (Graham, 2010: 183).

Many high tariff universities have mechanisms in place that aim to acknowledge that social circumstances can contribute to lower A level achievement (as in the assisted-entry scheme at one UK Russell Group university discussed below, which enables academic selectors to offer lower entrance requirements to students with particular educational disadvantages). However, these mechanisms operate in a context deeply marked by investments in high tariffs as a marker of institutional quality and reputation. It is therefore no surprise that while HE entry has increased for ‘disadvantaged’ 18-year olds with lower qualifications (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service [UCAS], 2014: 78),¹ high tariff universities recruit lower proportions of those students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds than ‘medium’ and ‘low’ tariff universities (UCAS, 2014: 73). Nevertheless, the ratio of entrants from the most advantaged to the most disadvantaged groups has fallen only from about 9:1 to about 7:1 in high tariff universities in recent years (UCAS 2014: 80).

This ratio suggests some of the ways in which selective recruitment and widening participation can be in tension in selective universities. In the following section, we discuss how widening participation is currently constructed in these contradictory contexts, starting by examining the language of policies for fair access to universities in the UK and the ways in which ‘contextual admissions’ in HE operates as an access system.

The language of fair access

The Office for Fair Access (‘OFFA’) has become increasingly important in managing policies of fair access to UK universities. OFFA aims to ensure that all learners have the chance to enter and succeed in HE and in particular seeks rapid widening of access to the ‘most selective’ HEIs (OFFA, 2016). Because it is now mandatory for HEIs charging the highest tuition fees to submit an Access Agreement to OFFA, it has a degree of power to hold universities’ recruitment and admissions processes to account. Although OFFA can fine defaulting HEIs or limit the fees they charge, in practice these powers have never been invoked. However, as it presents the official Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) policy for fair access (BIS, 2014), OFFA does have discursive power to frame the language and perception of fair access.

It is therefore interesting to note how rarely ‘class’ is mentioned in the 100 or so pages of OFFA’s key strategy document (BIS, 2014): the term ‘class’ is used only five times, three of these in a single quotation from ESRC research. In contrast, there are over 100 references to less desirable social positions or identities, most commonly ‘backgrounds’, ‘groups’ or ‘young people’. More than 50 of these references are qualified by labels like ‘disadvantaged’, ‘low participation neighbourhoods’, ‘under-represented’, or ‘poorer’ and ‘low income background’ (e.g. BIS, 2014: 6, 15, 17, 27, 39). ‘Background’ and ‘the disadvantaged’ are also used some 30 times on their own as shorthand synonyms for the complex social inequalities shaping access to HE. In the first five pages of OFFA’s website, ‘disadvantaged’ is used five times, ‘under-represented’ four, ‘low income’ three and background twice. ‘Class’ is not mentioned.

The language of ‘background’ similarly features in the UCAS (2014) analysis of fair access and widening participation. Its detailed discussion of application and selection processes uses the POLAR (Participation of Area) scale to measure the proportion of young (under-21) participation in HE in UK wards and neighbourhoods. The proportion of pupils qualifying for free school meals is used as a proxy for socio-economic disadvantage at the school level. But as in OFFA’s language, ‘background(s)’ is the single most frequently used term in discussions of educational participation and advantage – 23 times in UCAS’s most recent document (UCAS, 2014). In the vast majority of usages, ‘background’ stands alone. Again, the word ‘class’ does not appear. Nor is this atypical of educational statistics: as the authoritative House of Commons Library has observed, ‘the coverage of the socio-economic data had been falling for some years’ (House of Commons, 2014: 1). UCAS for example gave up collecting information on class backgrounds in 2008 (House of Commons, 2010: 1), blaming incomplete data.

In policy discourse, then, the language of class is not used to frame unequal participation in HE. ‘Background’ and ‘disadvantage’ do the discursive heavy lifting, without invoking structural inequalities or systemic failures. Applicants come from different kinds of social and geographical places but these are not connected, nor are they as important as where applicants are going; their destinations and aspirations. On admission, class origin is left behind and can be ignored – if it was ever there. Background implies that applicants can be separated from their circumstan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Introduction: setting the scene
• Part I Getting in: higher education access and participation
• Part II Getting on: classed experiences of higher education
• Part III Getting out: social class and graduate destinations
• Conclusion: social class, participation, and the marketised university
• Index