Inequality in Higher Education: a study of class barriers

Abstract

This paper is based on a study conducted among four groups of people who have direct experience of how social‐class position affects students’ access to, and participation in, higher education. Intensive interviews were undertaken with 122 people deliberately chosen from a range of counties, schools and higher educational institutions in Ireland. Interviews were undertaken with 40 low‐income working‐class second‐level students, 40 others at third level, 10 community workers who were both activists and parents in working‐class communities, 16 teachers and school principals including four from feepaying schools, and 16 second‐level students from fee‐paying secondary schools.

The aim of the study was to examine the barriers experienced by low‐income working‐class students in accessing and succeeding in higher education. The study also set out to identify strategies for change as seen from the perspectives of the different groups, and to examine the ways in which more privileged students were able to maintain their educational advantage.

Working within a broadly structuralist framework, the study identified three principal barriers facing working‐class students: economic, social and cultural, and educational. Our findings are in general concurrence, therefore, with those of Gambetta. However, our research suggests that while economic barriers are of prime importance, cultural and educational barriers are also of great significance. The three sets of barriers were also found to be highly interactive.

The research challenges the view of both resistance and rational action theorists as to the value of structuralist analysis. It argues for a dynamic view of structures as sets of institutions and social relations which are visible, accountable and open to transformation. It is suggested that the dynamic role of the state, and its collective and individual actors, in creating and maintaining inequality, needs to be more systematically addressed, especially in strongly (Stale) centralised education systems. Through the clarification of how the Stale and other education mediators create inequalities, it is possible to identify both the actors and the contexts where resistance is possible.