Students' Social Class in Three Northern Universities

Abstract

HERE HAS BEEN increasing discussion in recent years of the effects of the 1944 Education Act, particularly at the national level, and of the observed tendency of the middle classes rather than the working class to benefit from the expansion of educational opportunity which the Act was designed to bring about.' Although in the past much has been speculation and piecing together of fragmentary data,2 there is now fairly strong evidence to suggest that compared with earlier years there has been no increase in the working class share of entries to the universities.3 Indeed, it seems clear that such expansion in the proportion of working class students that has taken place and the cbrresponding reduction in social class differentials is 'neither large nor a unique phenomenon of the period after the 1944 Act'.4 The proportion of working class students in British universities has been estimated as 26 per cent5 and 25 per cent.6 The paucity of working class students taking advantage of higher education would seem to point to a problem which Halsey has called 'one of bridging a cultural gap which is not often recognized for what it is'.7 In an attempt to discover more about the social class composition of the student body and the effect on student relationships of social class divisions and of this 'cultural gap', a comparative survey has been carried out in the Universities of Edinburgh, Durham, and Newcastle.8 The survey was intensive and conducted by means of postal questionnaires, follow-up interviews, and considerable periods of participant observation which were invaluable in the interpretation of data. A total of 1,303 questionnaires were returned completed out of 1,975 sent out-although the response rates differed in different universities-and 187 one-hour interviews were held. The survey as a whole was designed to show not only certain facts about the social class composition, the proportion of first-generation university students, and the relation between parental and filial educational level-but also the effect which these factors have on the actual working of the student body and, in