Adaptive preference, justice and identity in the context of widening participation in higher education

Abstract

Cultures of low aspirations, and more particularly young people's adaptation to them, are often presented as the major obstacle to an economic development agenda which requires more higher-level skills and a social agenda which is about enabling people from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds to go to university. The article analyses and discusses some of the different sorts of constraints on the choices which we make and which may become unconsciously internalised and so constitute our adaptive preference. It argues, however, that all choice is significantly adaptive and has its roots in a self which neither in its development nor in its current agency is detached from the social context in which it has been constructed, with which it identifies and from which that identity itself derives many of its features. Finally the article discusses briefly the grounds on which intervention in the life of such a chooser might be justified and some implications for interventionist strategies which are sensitive to such a socially embedded view of the self.

Keywords:

• Adaptive preference
• Identity
• Justice
• Social intervention
• Widening participation

Acknowledgement

The empirical work by Watts and Bridges on the life and lifestyle aspirations of young people who have opted out of higher education, which is referred to in this article, was sponsored by the East of England Development Agency.

Notes

Notes

1. There is a literature which draws finer distinctions between ‘preference’ and ‘choice’ among other related terms (see Sen, 1971 1973 1993, and discussion in Nussbaum, 2000, p. 119 and following). For Sen preferences go together with beliefs to explain choices. I am not sure that the distinction is very material for the argument in this article and I will use the two terms fairly interchangeably.

2. This creates a problem for traditional preference economists for, as Sen points out: ‘characteristic of commitment … is the fact that it drives a wedge between personal choice and personal welfare, and much of traditional economic theory relies on the identity of the two’ (Sen, 1977, p. 319).

3. In another paper on a theme adjacent to this one, I have developed this argument with reference to Michael Young's work in The Rise of the Meritocracy (Young, 1961) and Family and Kinship in East London (Young and Wilmott, 1957), among other sources (see Bridges, 2005; Watts and Bridges, 2006, forthcoming).