In a Class of Their Own: How Working-Class Students Experience University

Abstract

Widening participation in higher education has been an enduring key policy concern in most Western countries. As Britain, the USA, Canada and other formerly industrial nations are transforming into post-industrial service economies, high levels of formal education are seen as essential to achieving equity and individual success (Canadian Council on Learning, 2006; Browne Review, 2010). As a consequence, universities have expanded and opened their doors to a new generation of non-traditional students. Young men and women from social backgrounds with no or little history of participation in higher education are called upon to change their educational behaviours and achieve mobility through attending university or other forms of higher education. Young people today are inundated with messages that equate success, both in work and life more generally, with high levels of formal education. Failure, in contrast, is generally associated with an inability to become educated and formally skilled (for critiques of these positions, see Brown et al., 2011; Gillies, 2005). Whether they are in higher education or not, most young people have accepted this pervasive public discourse of success through formal education.