Equity, markets and the politics of aspiration in Australian higher education

Abstract

This paper provides a critical discussion of contemporary policy agendas to raise aspirations for university study among students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. It traces the politics of aspiration from the working class ‘poverty of desire’ thesis propounded by British socialists at the turn of the twentieth century to recent concerns about the educational aspirations of low SES groups. These concerns are manifest in the current aspiration-raising agenda in Australian higher education, which aims to realise equity objectives by cultivating market-rational behaviour and dispositions to maximise self-investment in human capital. However, changes in contemporary global education and labour markets present significant obstacles to the ‘good life’ promises made by advocates of human capital theory, and even when these promises are realised, deficit constructions of aspirations persist. The paper identifies a tension in aspiration-raising logics between (1) human capital promises of economic rewards for enterprising behaviour and (2) the policing of aspirations and associated behaviours according to dominant social values.

Keywords:

• equity
• marketisation
• higher education
• aspirations
• human capital
• education policy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bob Lingard, Lew Zipin, Glenn Savage, Radhika Gorur and the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1.Since 2009 the Australian Government has been combining this area-based measure with the number of students receiving specified government benefit payments to determine low SES. The specific formula is to multiply the number of students from low SES areas by two, add the number of students receiving specified Centrelink payments, and then divide this total figure by three.

2.Latham's (2001) book on education policy was titled What did you learn today? Creating an education revolution. The Australian Labor government elected in 2007 announced an ‘education revolution’ in its 2008 Quality Education: The case for an education revolution in our schools (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008), and a ‘tertiary education revolution’ in Transforming Australia's higher education system (Australian Government, 2009). Each of these documents mobilises a third-way logic of weaving together economic productivity and social responsibility through education policy.