‘The sooner the better I could get out of there’: barriers to higher education access in Ireland

Abstract

As economic circumstances in Ireland, as elsewhere, remain difficult and applications for higher education entry reach record numbers, there has been renewed focus on higher education access. This article draws on the findings of a major Irish study which focuses on a group that has not shared in the general trend towards increased higher education participation – the offspring of the ‘lower non manual’ group. This article draws on the findings of that study to examine the barriers such young people face in accessing higher education. It is based on a combined analysis of 10 years of School Leavers’ Survey data and in-depth life-history interviews with school leavers whose parent(s) were employed in such non-manual jobs. Overall, the study points to the role of cultural, educational and economic factors shaping the higher education entry patterns of young people. It addition it highlights the importance of examining within as well between class patterns of educational attainment.

Keywords:

• higher education access
• social class
• non-manual group

Notes

1. This group is also known as lower services, sales and clerical or lower white-collar workers (European Socio-economic Classification [ESeC]).

2. A dominance approach is used (see Erikson 1984), whereby if both parents are in employment, the higher social class of the mother or father is assigned to the family.

3. There are four main school types in secondary education – secondary, community, comprehensive and vocational schools. In addition, students who attended a school deemed to have a high concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds under the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools programme (DEIS), 2005, are also identified.

4. Occupations such as chefs, bus drivers and hairdressers.

5. Shavit, Arum and Gamoran (2007), for example, examine the extent of inequality in eligibility for higher education and entry to higher education across 15 countries. As with much research in this area, inequality is measured in terms of the differences between those in professional/managerial classes and the skilled working class, thereby offering little insight into the relative experiences of ‘intermediate’ groups, such as the non-manual category.