A massive university or a university for the masses? Who goes where in higher
education: issues of family, gender, class and ethnicity?
Professor Miriam David, AcSS
Professor of Policy Studies in Education
Keele University
& Associate Director (HE), ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme,
Institute of Education, London University
Paper for the second seminar in the Thematic Seminar Series: Social Diversity and
Difference: Influence on Participation, Learning and Teaching in HE:
Seminar 2 on Pre-Entry – What have we learnt about the impact of gender, ethnicity
and socio-economic background on student choice of subject and choice of HEI at the
pre-entry stage of the student life cycle?
Abstract
Expansion of higher education has continued inexorably over the last 3 decades, and
recent rhetoric of the new Labour Government in the UK celebrates this whilst also
aiming to further widen participation and access. However, a key feature of this
expansion, or ‘massification’ has rarely been acknowledged viz the increasing
participation of women in higher education such that they now constitute 53% of all
undergraduates. Similar proportions of women undergraduates are to be found in other
countries, especially in Europe. This paper draws on data from an English study (with
Diane Reay and Stephen Ball) and from a study in Spain by Delia Langa Rosado to
problematise these issues and argues that the massification of higher education has been
accompanied by a deepening of social stratification within HE. Thus we have now
massive universities rather than universities for the masses. This paper explores these
complexities to demonstrate that both young and mature students confront very differing
higher educations and choices that continue to be shaped by family, gender, social class
and ethnicity.
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A massive university or a university for the masses? Who goes where in higher
education: issues of family, gender, class and ethnicity?
Introduction:
This paper draws on a study that I conducted with Diane Reay and Stephen Ball, funded
by the ESRC, on student choices of higher education in the late 1990s and into the early
twenty-first century. The study was conducted in London in 6 different institutional
settings, namely both state and private or independent schools, and sixth form and further
education colleges.1 We questioned a large number of young people at school and college
about how they were going about the processes of choosing higher education and we
followed up on this with some more in-depth interviews with 120 students and the
parents of 40 students. A book based upon our work has just been published by Trentham
Books, entitled Degrees of Choice: Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education (Reay,
David and Ball, 2005) and there are several papers that have already been published to
which we will refer (David, Ball, Davies and Reay 2003).
I report on what we have learnt about the impact of gender, family, social class and
ethnicity on pre-entry approaches to HE. I provide some of our findings around issues of
student, family and parental involvement in the processes of choice of higher education,
including questions of gender and ethnicity, and Diane will talk more generally about
issues of social class. I will address issues of gender and family from our interview study,
and then consider more general questions about family visits, and the uses of information
about HE, that students and their families relied on, when our study was conducted. We
should note that there have been further changes given the rapidly changing global and
information technological practices in relation to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’.
The study was an attempt to situate changing family and social class practices in relation
to changing forms of higher education, and in particular the moves towards greater forms
of consumerism within higher education, including changing forms of information. We
wanted to contextualise and theorise changing forms of higher education and the relations
to gender and social class. We also wanted to consider how the various social and
educational changes were influencing how young people and their families went about
the choice processes.
The changing contexts of Higher Education:
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Our project involved two cohorts of students, their parents and various intermediaries (career teachers,
sixth form tutors) in 6 educational institutions in London: an 11-18 mixed comprehensive with a large
minority ethnic working class intake (Creighton Community School – CCS); a comprehensive sixth form
consortium serving a socially diverse community (Maitland Union – MU); a tertiary college with a large Alevel population (Riverway College – RC); a further education college which runs HE access courses
(Fennister FE college – FFEC); two private schools, one single-sex boys (Cosmopolitan Boys – CB) and
one single sex girls (Hemsley Girls – HG). We administered a questionnaire to 502 year 12 and 13
students, ran focus groups and interviewed sub-samples of 120 students and 40 parents.
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One of the key features of higher education that we have explored is that of the massive
expansion of forms of higher education over the last 2 to 3 decades, and a process that is
now often referred to both nationally and internationally as the massification of higher
education. However, a question that has recently been raised in relation to these processes
is whether this expansion of higher education has altered the relations between the social
classes or merely provided for an extension of educational provision across the social
classes keeping the relative disparities between social classes relatively unchanged. This
question was raised in particular by a Spanish sociologist – Delia Langa Rosado – who
addressed similar questions in her study of students involved in one university in Spain
that drew on similar theoretical and conceptual approaches to those that we have used in
our study, namely trying to work with Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural capital, habitus
and field. She drew our attention to the work of Jerez Mir (1997) who also asked similar
questions about the global transformations in higher education and especially whether we
were witnessing a massive university rather than a university for the masses (Rosado and
David, forthcoming).
Most of our evidence suggests that the expansion has been around social class differences
and in particular about how the different approaches of different families and the young
people are in terms not only of choices but also economic and social predispositions and
facilities available. In particular, we would argue that the expansions of higher education
in Britain and other countries such as Spain have been similar legal and policy processes
and have had similar implications for students and young people, such that we would
argue that overall the expansion has been towards what Mir (1997) would call ‘a massive
university’ rather than ‘a university for the masses’. In other words, expansions of higher
education have tended to increase opportunities for all students but on a relatively
differentiated basis in relation to social class, although social class conceptions have also
changed in the process. However, this means that opportunities for HE have not included
provisions for all working class students, or a university for the masses, but rather an
expansion of higher education for the expanding middle classes. This is what is meant by
a ‘massive university’. For example in a recent international survey which included
Britain and Spain Carabana (2002) came to the conclusion that social class differences in
opportunities to attend university had not significantly altered, although there had been
expansions in the numbers and proportions of the social classes attending HE.
Indeed, over the last 25 years, there has been a massive increase in the numbers of
students participating in HE, from three-quarters of a million to well over two million
students in Britain. One of the key features of the expansion of HE over the last two or
three decades has been the increasing involvement of women, compared to men from
across ethnic and social class groupings. Thus the expansion of universities can be seen
to have relied upon the new middle classes and especially women rather than the working
classes. The growth of female participants in HE has been massive, totally transforming
the composition. By 2004, the proportion of women students in various forms of HE in
British universities was 54% (THES, March 2005) and co-incidentally in Spain this
figure in 2003 was 53% (Rosado and David, forthcoming). If we look at part-time and
mature students the proportions of women are higher (viz 61.4% and 64.2% in 2001/2
(Social Trends 2004)). In addition, the proportion of women in the UK gaining
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qualifications to enter HE, two or more A levels (or equivalent) has increased from 20
percent in 1992/93 to 43 percent in 2001/2. For young men over the same period, the
increase has been from 18 percent to 34 percent. Thus the performance gap between the
sexes has widened to 9 percentage points from just under 2 percentage points in 1992/3.
Thus women constitute a significant proportion of all social class groupings applying to
and entering HE in Britain.
Gender & the processes of student involvement:
We wanted to study how gender influenced how the students made choices about the
involvement of themselves and their families (David, Ball, Davies and Reay, 2003). In
fact, more girls chose to talk to us than boys and several talked in collaborative rather
than individual ways (see Table 1). Moreover, far more girls than boys volunteered to
involve their parents in the interviews (see Table 2). These parents tended to be mothers
rather than fathers. We present illustrations of these new generations of women and men
involved in higher education but only draw on the families of the students from 5 of the 6
institutions since we did not interview any parents of mature students at FFEC (Reay,
Ball & David, 2002). We assumed that these mature students might themselves be
parents and would be independent of their families. We interviewed their partners where
appropriate. We thus asked the 98 students whether we might interview their parents on
the telephone about their views of involvement.
Gender is woven into the whole fabric of the study. The 98 students interviewed were not
evenly balanced across gender as can be seen from Table 1, with 52 female and 46 male
students choosing to take part. There were far more women amongst the mature students
than men as we had expected (Reay et al., 2002). The 98 students were also not equally
distributed across the schools (see Table 1). The two single-sex fee-paying schools
together provided a little under a third of the interviewees whereas the working class, coeducational, minority ethnic comprehensive school provided the smallest number of
interviewees. There were also more girls in one of the state sixth forms (MU) whilst there
were more boys at the other state sixth form (RC).
All 98 students interviewed had highly educated parents. At HG both parents of all the
girls had university education; at CB only 3 - all Asian - were first generation to
university. At MU most parents were university educated and less than a third of the
students were first generation university students. At RC a minority were first generation
students, whilst the reverse was true of CCS, with only 4 out of 11 fathers with degrees.
We had theoretically sampled to obtain students from working class families and/or who
wanted to attend the more elite universities, such as Oxford or Cambridge. These
working class families provide a contrast with students from CCS who were also from
working class and chiefly Asian ethnic minority families. Students from middle class
family backgrounds in MU and RC shared some characteristics with the students from
the two single-sex schools (CB and HG) since some had transferred from fee-paying
schools for their A levels, obviating the need for their parents to invest financially in
paying fees.
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Overall, fewer boys volunteered than girls and gender is also significant in the ways some
of the girls, in contrast to the boys, wished to be interviewed: in pairs rather than
individually. We wanted a small number of parents to interview about involvement and
tried to elicit names from the students during their interviews but less than four out of
five volunteered their parents. We interviewed less than half of these parents, as the
others proved elusive and too busy. Girls were more willing than boys to allow us to
approach their parents. 26 girls gave us names of their parents whereas only 16 boys did.
These differences related to gender perspectives on involvement in education, such as
how boys felt about their educational progress, and gender differences in views of
autonomy and independence from parents in decision-making.
However, the boys proposed their fathers nearly as often as they proposed their mothers
whereas the girls suggested mothers far more frequently than fathers. The four parents
who proved elusive to speak to were all fathers. The gender balance of the parents was
three mothers to every one father. Both the female and male students, who volunteered
their parents, suggested mothers far more often than fathers. A third of the parents were
from lone mother households, suggesting that it might have been easier to volunteer a
parent with whom they lived. However, girls volunteered mothers far more often than
boys. Many of the mothers worked. However, despite maternal employment as well as
paternal employment, a rather typical response was that, in those families where fathers
were present, they would be too busy working and would not want to be disturbed.
Most of the students did not want us to approach their parents. Both boys’ and girls’ main
reasons related to their views of their parents’ interests, ability to be involved and
involvement in work. Their reasons about their parents’, and their own, views were partly
gender-linked. The supposition that their parents were too busy and working was shared
by boys and girls across the social classes. The perception that parents could not
contribute since they had no experience on which to draw was offered most by working
class students whose parents had not attended higher education. Khalid (CCS) expressed
his reasons for not involving his parents strongly:
‘I’ve got a lot of brothers and sisters so it is really difficult for [my parents] to
give a lot of attention to just one. I have got seven brothers and including me
that is eight, and two sisters…so I didn’t get any advice at all; like I said they
left it all to me’.
All the students at CCS had parents who were working and had very little time. They did
not want to disturb their parents, who could not help as Khalid had intimated.
Many students did not want their parents to be involved in discussing their perspectives
on the processes of choice. Gender was significant in that boys tended not to want parents
to be involved as they felt that they would intrude on their lives at school. The boys at the
state schools did not want parents to focus on their schoolwork as many of them felt that
they were behind in their assignments and doing poorly in practice examinations. Thus
the reasons varied from protecting their parents or themselves from an intrusion into their
more personal family matters, to the evaluation of a process in which parents were
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deemed not to be relevant. These differences map on to similar views that were found in
a study of children’s understandings of parental involvement in their schooling (Edwards
and Alldred, 2000). Gender was salient in how girls were involved in the study and how
they involved their mothers. At both of the two state sixth forms - MU and RC - we
interviewed some girls in pairs rather than individually. These girls also suggested that
we interview their mothers mentioning how they too had co-operated in supporting their
choices.
There were significant differences in terms of gender, linked to both familial and
institutional habitus. Girls tended to pursue more collaborative strategies than boys. Boys
tended not to want parents to intrude on their lives at school, some because they were not
progressing well in their studies and others because of their desire for independence and
autonomy from parents. Girls were far more willing to engage their parents, mothers
especially, in how they went about choosing higher education. However, both boys and
girls who did not want to involve their parents offered notions about their parents’ work
or lack of knowledge of higher education as the main reasons. In particular, the
institutional habitus of the working class, minority ethnic state school was rooted in an
ethos of parental passivity and non-involvement on grounds of lack of knowledge of
higher education (Reay, 1998b).
Unusual fathers involved in the study:
The total number of fathers interviewed was only seven. One father (Sarah, from an
African background) was unusual in that he was unemployed but a school governor, and
had higher educational qualifications. The other father (Khalid, Asian) attended the focus
group arranged by Eva. There he presented his attitudes to higher education as our field
notes demonstrated:
Eva has organised a session for Bengali parents. Ahmed, a ‘successful’ expupil now at medical school has come back to talk to them about the
university experience. I am there initially to talk about finances in the
hope that parents will stay on afterwards to talk to me about how they feel
about their child going to university. Rasmid, the translator, is going to
remain behind to translate for me…All three parents had left school in
Bangladesh without any formal qualifications. I asked about their parents’
attitudes and Khalid’s father laughed and said: in our youth parents did not
have attitudes to education they had attitudes to work and you had to go
out and earn money for your family as soon as possible…
The two CCS fathers were contrasts in ethnicity (Asian versus African) and educational
background (early school leaver versus PhD) but very similar in traditional patriarchal
approaches to parenthood. Six of the seven fathers interviewed were from two-parent
families. Four were fathers of sons and two fathers of girls were from two-parent families
and one was a widower. These three fathers were relatively atypical; Sarah’s father (CCS,
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African PhD); one volunteered himself (Sandra at RC) as more involved than his wife
(who came from Switzerland and lacked knowledge of English higher education) and
another volunteered because he was a widower (Sharon’s father at MU).
Girls and their Mothers’ Intensive Involvement in the Choice Processes:
We interviewed three pairs of girls - one at RC and two at MU - who had extremely close
friendships and were keen to go together to universities and collaborate over the whole
process. All three pairs of their mothers, despite dissimilar social and educational
backgrounds, also co-operated over the processes of involvement. They also held strong
views and directly influenced how their daughters made their choices, by rejecting certain
choices that their daughters had made (Ball et al, 2000).
The pair of girls at RC - Kamie (South American black) and Marcia (black) - were both
from minority ethnic families and their mothers had been determined that their daughters
would go to university, although they had not been. Both mothers told us that they had
not had as much opportunity as their daughters had thought.
I: When did you first start to think about what Kamie would do when she
left school?
K’s mum: When she was in year 11, yeah……
I: And did you or your husband go to university yourselves?
K’s mum: No, no, I’m not with Kamie’s dad anymore and I didn’t have
that opportunity. When I came over here I went into nursing and I trained
as a nurse. In those days they didn’t have to go to university to do nursing
Similarly Marcia’s mother told us:
M’s mum: Yeah, long before she took her GCSEs, she knew quite clearly
what she wanted to do from a very early age.
I: …She also said that you were the biggest influence on her choices. And
I wondered how you felt you had influenced her?
M’s mum: The biggest influence on her choices? I certainly didn’t
influence her to go for acting.
I: For De Montfort
M’s mum: Or oh you mean choice of …
I: I think both. She was talking about the whole UCAS process. And what
she decided to do and where she decided to go. She said if she had to think
of who was the biggest influence it would be you
M’s mum: Right OK well there were places that I definitely did not want
her to go to. Because she got an interview, I can’t remember the name of
the uni, but I think it was Salford in Manchester. I said no no way you are
going there
I Why?
M’s mum: Because I know Manchester…so I thought no way. You know,
they are calling it Gunchester these days. I said No. First time away from
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home, you are certainly not going there. I wouldn't feel that she was
safe...well, may be to a degree because I did say no, you are not going
there. I really didn’t want her to go too far….
These two minority ethnic mothers provided practical support, by vigorously pursuing
long-term ambitions that their daughters go to university, despite major financial
obstacles. Similarly the two pairs of mothers from MU were practically supportive of
their daughters (Anne and Miah; Cassie and Nancy). Anne’s mother (working class, twoparent) told us how involved she had been, together with Anne’s friend Miah’s mother
(lower middle class, lone mother), whilst sharing financial worries. They went on visits to
universities with their daughters together, providing models of co-operation.
‘She also went, her mother and I trotted off to Cambridge…Miah’s
mum…And I think she had very much the same experience with the school. I
mean we were really in the dark and we hadn’t anybody to talk to the girls
about it at all, you know, except for private things that we have managed to
do ourselves…yeah we went up to Pembroke, to the Pembroke open day and
trotted around and then I think Miah applied to Pembroke and Anne applied
to Kings…but finances are very much a concern. I work term time only and
her dad’s a postman and we earn under £30,000 between us.’
Miah’s mother, (MU) a university educated lone parent with financial insecurities and a
part-time job at a new university in London told us:
‘Obviously I knew she was going into higher education but I didn’t know
what direction it was…I’ve supported her quite a bit, with the French,
because I did a degree in French as well…I went to Cambridge with her
for a pre sort of look, for an open day, that’s all because it was near…
Cassie’s mother (MU, black, lone parent and teacher) whose daughter also collaborated
with a close friend, Nancy, also went on trips together with Nancy’s mother. She put a
somewhat different gloss on the story about the choice processes, referring to having to
control her strong influence. She also mentioned the pressures that ex-partners as absent
fathers sometimes exert:
..I went through the prospectuses and I mean I have to be careful because I
can be overbearing sometimes and my mum kept reminding me Lorraine it’s
her course…When we all went, because I went up on the open day with
Cassie and Nancy to Chester…I’ve been through university quite recently. I
went as a mature student to do a B.Ed at North London. I qualified 7 years
ago…her dad also studied at the same time as I did. And he’s a social worker.
And we are not together anyway, but he was pushing North London an awful
lot, saying me and your mum went there, you know, what’s the matter with
you going there. He was actually very worried about Cassie going away. Very
worried…
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Cassie also had mentioned the pressure that her father was exerting on her to go to a
particular university. Anne’s working class father was a postman and was far more
distant than Cassie’s non-residential father who had been to university. These pro-active,
anxious mothers from lower middle class ‘fractions’ report having to deal with fathers’
hopes and fears, for daughters and sons. Such intensive maternal involvement in higher
education choices also entails regulating fathers’ involvement.
The mothers’, and daughters’, accounts revealed similarities between two-parent and lone
parent families where fathers had been to university. University educated fathers tended
to influence the process by trying to ‘lay-down-the-law’. For example, two sons of lone
mothers (Marcus and Richard at MU) also mentioned the pressure that their fathers had
exerted. Richard’s mother, a divorced lone parent, (MU) said:
It was a huge issue between us because my ex-husband has always been very
pro Oxford and I didn’t think it was the right thing for Richard and nor did
Richard and there was a big internal disagreement in the family about
it…Richard is not really interested in developing fine art.
Examples of Fathers’ Individualistic Involvement, especially with daughters:
The fathers of daughters offered examples of intensive parenting but on an individualistic
rather than co-operative basis. Sharon’s father (and late mother MU) had been to an elite
university whereas Sandra’s father (RC) had been to a redbrick university. Sandra’s
father told us about a range of issues in relation to his daughter:
I don’t know when we started thinking about what Sandra might do after
school. I suppose it’s been in the back of our minds over the past year…but
university was not necessarily an expectation in Sandra’s case because we
were never quite sure how well she would do at A levels. I mean we hoped
she would…yes I mean we would like her to go into something that at least
gave her some further training of some sort…but she hasn’t been terribly proactive in terms of trying to explore some options…I guess my wife and I sort
of forced the issue on the university front…….we looked at a few websites to
get information….I think she’s found it very very stressful…she’s not
particularly strong academically and I suppose like any of us at that age, or
most of us at that age, doesn’t have a strong view of the way her career might
develop…..[but] finances are not such a worry. We had the added advantage
in her older sister’s case that she is my step-daughter and not my daughter. I
was surprised to find out, just before she went, that my salary isn’t taken into
account for grant purposes….But in Sandra’s case it’s not an issue. I mean
it’s only her that we will have to pay for in terms of going through university,
so money is not really a deciding factor in that. We’ll support her through
that….
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We also found differences in terms of gender, social class, institutional and familial
habitus, over types of professional and pragmatic involvement. These mapped on to
Reay’s initial theories about higher education choices (Reay, 1998b). Upper middle class
mothers who had been in higher education and chose private schools tended to have a
professional engagement with higher education choices, whilst more middle class
‘fractions’ of mothers tended to be more pro-active and pragmatic, anxious to ensure their
children’s educational successes. These lower middle class mothers were intensively
involved with encouraging their daughters, across racial and ethnic boundaries. All the
mothers of daughters tended to be intensively and highly involved in their daughters’
educational progress, whether they were professional or pragmatic. The fathers that we
interviewed tended to be unusual and unusually involved in their children’s education.
We especially noted the intensity and individualism of the involvement of the three
fathers with their daughters. However, we also noted that many fathers were reported, in
the interviews with their wives or ex-wives and children, both sons and daughters, to be
concerned about their forms of investment in education. Middle class families invested
heavily in their student children and fathers, whatever their familial habitus and
household, tried to control the choice process. Some intensive mothers reported having to
control their partners or ex-partners.
Thus we would argue that gender is indeed highly significant in higher education choice
processes. Boys and girls differ in how they are involved in education and choice
processes, illustrating changing forms of young people’s gendered identities and
subjectivity. They also differ in how they engage their mothers and fathers in the
processes and boys tend to be more resistant to involvement seeing it as intrusive or
irrelevant. Mothers and fathers similarly differ in their involvement in terms of intensity
and influence but changes in higher education have led to more engagement in the
processes of choice, illustrating changing institutional and familial habitus. These
changing perspectives demonstrate gendered, racialised and classed reflexivity about
parental involvement in choices of higher education.
The gendered and strategic uses of information in the pre-entry processes:
We now briefly consider the information, both formal and informal, that higher education
applicants use in their decision-making using evidence from both the questionnaires to
over 500 students and the 120 in-depth interviews with students, including the mature
students. One section of the questionnaire we gave to the students was devoted to asking
them what sources of information they were using to help them choose. School/college,
prospectuses, higher education establishments, friends and career advisors were all
selected by over 50% of the 502 respondents as sources of information they used a lot.
A third of students were using fathers for information and slightly more (36%) saw their
mother as an important source of information. Slightly less than a third drew on siblings
for advice, while just over a quarter of respondents said websites were a useful source of
information. The practices of applicants and their tactics relate to the social differences
and divisions that result from the enormously varied quantity and quality of social,
cultural and economic capital amongst them. While the dominant model of decision-
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making is still that of rational choice theory in which students are perceived to be rational
decision-makers, our data especially from the interviews, indicates that decision-making
is often a messy process involving intuition, affective response and serendipity as much
as systematic evaluation and careful consideration of the evidence available.
Prospectuses versus Visits to HEI:
Visits to universities were used far less often than prospectuses in students' decisionmaking. Poorer students could rarely find the time to make visits as they juggled
academic work and labour market commitments. In the FE college and CCS many
students could also not afford the costs any more than the time involved:
This issue about funding visits to open days is a big, big issue. We have
actually, where students have expressed a real interest in going and seeing
somewhere, we have actually tried to find the funds to cover half the cost of
that where possible and in some circumstances that has been very difficult.
We try and pay for half the train fare or coach fare and that's been a problem
because students haven't got the money to do that. Parents haven't got the
money to be able to send them on a trip and it's a big, big problem for many
of our students. So although there have been trips available the uptake has
been low. Even the Sussex trip, which was run jointly by the college and the
school, I mean, it wasn't expensive, it was seven pounds, but still for some
students that's unmanageable. (Sue, Head of Sixth Form, CCS)
The costs involved were also an issue for working class students in the other state
institutions:
I didn't get to see most of the universities that I applied to. That's one of the
reasons I looked so carefully at the prospectuses and everything because I
hadn't actually had a chance to see them. It's really expensive to go and visit
universities all over the country. You need money. (Lorna, white English
working class student, MU)
In the state institutions visits, when they did occur, were most often used post-UCAS
decision-making, as a mechanism of elimination rather than as part of a process of
choice:
So the open day is actually used by students for eliminating. Often it's only
after they've been made an offer somewhere. It's at that stage they go. It's
not 'let's have a look at universities and then I might make some choices’.
They will say 'I'm going to Nottingham. I've had an offer and I want to see
if I like the town'. (Ms Keen, 6th form coordinator, MU)
It was only in the two private schools that visits operated effectively as a means of
choice-making:
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Loads of people went on Open days in the lower sixth. (Tim, white, middle
class student, CB)
It all started with 'What are you doing?' 'Where are you going?’ Went there,
realised it existed. Then started filling in the UCAS form. (Louisa, White,
middle class student, HG)
Louisa spelt out a chronology that is very different to that of the majority of the state
students. Their chronology would, in most cases, be one in which the order is reversed
with filling in the UCAS form coming before making visits, if any. Martin Rose, Head of
MU's sixth form implied that a significant minority of his students visit after they have
made up their minds; a process of confirmation rather than elimination and an event that
is not only post UCAS - form filling but also post UCAS offer acceptance:
It's mostly 'if they've made me an offer I'll go'. Or not even that. 'If I decide
that's the one I want to go to then I'll visit it'. (Martin Rose, Head of 6th
form, MU)
Yet, visits, when time could be found for them, often made striking impressions and
could prove central in the final choice of institution:
I've been to Oxford and to be honest it's the only place that I felt I could be.
I clicked with the place and I think that rare that you just find a place that
you could really like. (Alicia, white middle class student, HG)
To be quite honest with you, I think the thing that decided him on York was
when he made a visit there and I think he kind of feel in love with the place.
(Mrs Silvester, white middle class mother of RC student)
Again the lack of information, and lack of direct experience prior to acceptance could be
factors which are related to the non-completion of certain categories of students in certain
sorts of institutions. This is not simply a matter of existential discomfort. Ozga &
Sukhnandan (1998 p. 321), in a study of HE non-completers, relate non-completion to
"lack of preparedness for university life - inadequate sources of information and
unrealistic expectations and compatibility of choice". That is "the degree of match
between students and their choice of institution and course" (p. 322). First generation
choosers without appropriate cultural capital or relevant social capital may easily find
themselves in the wrong place or in the wrong course with all the risks of drop-out that
that brings into play. Half of the ten UK universities with the highest drop-out rates also
have high proportions of ethnic minority students.
Websites, gender and parental involvement:
Surprisingly, less than a third of the students had utilised computing resources in their
decision-making. Although even more surprising was Connor et al's (1999) finding that
less than 3% of their 20,000 sample utilised IT-based media. For some of the institutions,
12
notably in the state sector this fairly low level of consultation seemed to be linked to
resources:
The booking system for computers is a real problem. You only have time to
look at one university in the time allocated and that doesn't allow you to make
any comparisons so it's a bit of a waste of time. (Khorul, CCS)
When the research project began, in 1998, one of the state schools did not even provide
access to the web:
We are deficient in computers and I have been making a terrible fuss because we
haven't got the internet yet. The vice principal has agreed that it is essential that
we get it. We've only got one decent computer and four battered ones in careers.
(Mrs Walters, RC)
In view of the inadequate school based provision it is perhaps unsurprising that most
accounts of web use referred to usage in the home where parents seemed to be consulting
the net as much as their children:
On the websites they give a bit more detail in terms of the course and how the
courses operate (Mrs Patterson, white, middle class mother)
My dad's been the one sitting there on the internet for hours printing off endless
amounts of information for me to read through. (Katy Patterson, white, middlle
class student, RC)
We sat down with the league table and went through the internet to look
through each and every single university that was doing the course he wants to
do. (Mrs Caulrick, white, middle class mother)
She's gone onto university websites and it’s been brilliant
working class mother)
(Mrs Milner, white
I printed out tons of those syllabuses from everywhere and that's when it came
home that there actually was a material difference in where you went to study.
And she realised that there were some courses that she thought were absolutely
fascinating and some that were really dreary. Then I did the same for Cambridge
and came up with two colleges which from the websites looked as if she would
actually enjoy being there so I narrowed my choice to St Catherine's and Clare
from the website. (Mrs Michaelson, white, middle class mother)
Among the students themselves feelings were mixed as to the utility of the web in choice
making:
I started really nitty-gritty going onto the internet, onto their web pages and
really finding out what it was like (Alexa, white middle class student, HG)
13
I did go to the SOAS website but it was exactly the same as the prospectus so its
easier and cheaper to just flick through the book (Julia, white, working class
mature student, FFEC)
I literally went to all the websites and it was quite informative, you saw pictures
but some of them were literally just photocopies of the prospectus. It was quite
good for checking open day timings and dates but apart from that the
only
advantage was getting the e-mail address. (Navin, Indian middle class student,
CB)
The websites were completely useless, the ones that I looked at, so I just gave
up after the first two (Vicki, white, working class student, RC)
I did look at a few websites, they were just useless, didn't help at all.
(Kalok, Chinese, working class student, MU)
And a number of girls were self-deprecating about their ability to use the internet:
The first time I went on the internet I thought I was going to kill the machine.
I thought everything was going to go wrong and I had about three friends all
helping me.(Louisa, white, middle class student, HG)
I did look at a few websites but not that much. I'm not really into the internet. I
don't do that well on it. (Lisa, white, working class student, MU)
I'm not actually that competent at using the internet so. (Helen, white, middle
class student, HG)
The comments of both students and their parents suggest that universities are using the
website differently. For some universities it remains simply electronic paper while others
are attempting to utilise it as a real alternative media.
Conclusions:
We have identified a number of differences in the ways in which students and their
families go about the processes of choosing higher education or issues in terms of preentry in the wider context of changing strategies for higher education. In particular, we
have identified gender as a key issue both in relation to the students themselves and in
relation to their families and their school or college situations. However, it is clear that
gender is mediated by social class and/or the kinds of school/college and HEI that they
may consider attending. Thus, gender also influences the ways in which mothers and
fathers might also help their children through the processes, including the uses of
information, websites, prospectuses and visits to HEIs.
14
Some parents, and especially mothers, became intensively involved with their children’s
processes of choice, and here we identified the collaborative strategies of both daughters
and their mothers, especially those from minority ethnic backgrounds. Fathers, by
contrast, tended to be much more individualistic. Nevertheless, this was also a relatively
limited group since the majority of students we interviewed did not want us to involve
their parents.
A key overarching issue about these pre-entry strategies and in particular in relation to
the quality or paucity of information on which to base decisions is the question of the
resources available to individual students, their school/college and the kinds of HEI they
are choosing to think about or attend. This confirms the overarching situation of the
continuing stratification of HE in terms of social class, despite the massive expansion that
has taken place over the last 2 to 3 decades.
References:
Alldred P and Edwards, R (1997)
Ball, S.J. Davies, J David M.E. and Reay, D (2002)
Carabana, J (1997) ‘La evolucion de la desigualdades educativas por clases socials
en Espana segun la Encuesta Sociodemografica 1907-1976 borrador presendado en
la VI Confernecia de Sociologia de la Educacion, Jaca
Connor, H., Burton, Pearson R ., Pollard, E and Regan J (1999) Making the right
choice: how students choose universities and colleges London CVCP
David, M.E. Ball, S.J. Davies J and Reay D (2003) Gender issues in parental
involvement in student choices of higher education Gender and Education 15, 1 21-37
Jerez Mir, R (1997) ‘La Universidad en la encrucijada: Universidad dual o
Universidad democratica de masas’, Revista de Educacion 314 137-156
Ozga, J & Sukhnandan (1998)
Reay, D (1998)
Reay, D; David, M.E and Ball, S.J. (2005) Degrees of Choice: Class, Gender and Race
in the Higher Education choice process (Stoke on Trent Trentham Books)
Reay, D, Ball, S.J. and David, M (2002) It’s taking me a long time but I’ll get there in
the end: Mature students on access courses and higher education choice’ British
Educational Research Journal 28; 1 5 - 19
Rosado, D.L and David, M.E. (2005 forthcoming) A massive university or a university
for the masses? Continuity and change in Higher Education in Spain and England.
15
Table 1:
STUDENT INTERVIEW SAMPLE
NUMBER OF STUDENTS
SCHOOL/
BOY
GIRL
TOTAL
COLLEGE
Cosmopolitan
NUMBER
13
13
Boys’ (CB)
Hemsley
15
15
14
12
26
15
18
33
4
7
11
46
52
98
Girls’ (HG)
Riverway
College (RC)
Maitland
Union (MU)
Creighton
Community
School (CCS)
TOTAL
NUMBER
Table 2:
PARENT SAMPLE: GENDER OF THE PARENTS AND STUDENTS
INTERVIEWED
NUMBER OF PARENTS
MOTHERS
FATHERS
22
3
TOTAL
NUMBER
25
9
4
13
31
7
38
GIRLS
BOY S
TOTAL
NUMBER
16