Impersonal statements: aspiration and cruel optimism in the English higher education application process

ABSTRACT

Full-time undergraduate applicants to English universities must apply via the University and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS). By analysing the UCAS statements of 15 undergraduate applicants this article attempts to develop a critical understanding of the role that the personal statement has in applicants’ formation of themselves as subjects within higher education. The article explores how UCAS’s advice around the personal statements draws on discourses that frame higher education as an investment in human capital. Through a textual analysis of applicants’ statements, the article explores how applicants come to present themselves as competitive subjects within their personal statements, and suggests they adopt this position not because they are preparing themselves for the unlimited number of student places in higher education, but for the limited number of graduate jobs that await afterwards. The article suggests there is a ‘cruel optimism’ to this element of the application process, linked to structural inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• admissions
• personal statements
• human capital
• hope

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Those aged between 21 and 30. (Office of National Statistics, 2016, p. 5).

2. A graduate who left full time education within five years of the ONS survey: in this case, those who gradated since 2012.

3. Hayek actually suggested that success in a market is also a matter of luck and rejected the idea that income in a market-based society was relative to merit, but this caveat has been largely ignored by the political discourse of neoliberalism (Hayek, 1976; Turner, 2008).

4. At the time of this research, undergraduate tuition fees for British and EU students studying in English universities were capped at £9,000 per annum, with only four universities charging less than this maximum figure (The Complete University Guide, 2016). Tuition fees are a mechanism for funding the English higher education system, and individual institutions, and do not cover students’ individual living costs whilst studying. Students are able to take out a loan from the government to cover the cost of the fees, which is paid directly to their institution. This loan becomes payable once a student graduates and begins earning over £21,000 per annum.

5. Subject choice was decided in order to test any differences between Liberal Arts students and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students. History, seen as a classical subject, is often believed to have no obvious fixed career path, while computer science suggests a more definite career path. It was also necessary to choose subjects that were offered at both universities.

6. Fee-paying schools are attended by just 7% percent of the UK population (Ashley et al., 2015).

7. Though the proof of these skills is often reduced to has-a-degree or does-not-have-a-degree.

8. Widening participation in the UK refers to policies implemented both by government and individual higher education institutions to increase the number of students from under-represented groups, especially those from families with no previous experience of higher education.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Houghton

Elizabeth Houghton gained her doctorate from Lancaster University in 2017. Her thesis was entitled ‘Students’ Experiences: Choice, Hope and Everyday Neoliberalism in English Higher Education’. She was supervised by Andrew Sayer and Richard Tutton. She is currently working outside of academia, in policy development.