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This paper asks whether the institutional hierarchies defined by ‘golden triangle’, other Russell Group, other pre-1992 and post-1992 universities in England, and by ancient, old and new universities in Scotland, have become weaker since the 1990s. Using indicators constructed from Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data for 1996–2010, the article finds a stable hierarchical relationship among the sectors within each country, with some indicators showing a slight widening of status differences between sectors towards the end of the period. The main exception was a slight ‘upgrading’ of new (post-1992) universities in Scotland early in the period. There was little change in the association of institutional sector with social class, but in England the association with private secondary schools became slightly stronger and the association with ethnicity weakened. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite rapid growth in UK postgraduate education and a current focus on issues of access to higher education, consideration of possible social class differentials at the postgraduate level is missing from the sociological literature. Using Higher Education Statistics Agency data, this paper presents a preliminary investigation of the relationship between social class and progression to postgraduate study in England and considers the interplay with other salient variables, including subject of study, institutional type and first–degree achievement. Evidence of a social class differential in progression to higher degrees is used to test various sociological theories, particularly those proposed by Bourdieu. There is support for the concept of ‘institutional habitus’ developed in recent UK studies. It is concluded that there is scope for further in–depth empirical research into social class and postgraduate study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents several articles offering sociologists' views on cuts in British higher education as of 1984. John Brennan contributes a nation-wide view of the cuts in the public sector, outlines institutional policies and prejudices and suggests strategies for survival. His paper also shows that the distinctive ecology of public sector higher education poses both threats and opportunities for sociology. Meanwhile, Alan Waton provides a macro-view of the UGC action. Rosemary Deem writers of her experience as a County Councilor involved in working for the retention of courses in a public sector college and provides the only contribution with a happy ending. Also Ivan Reid discussed the problems and potentials of strategies for survival. According to Brennan, there never was a golden age for the polytechnics. He further said that they have experienced cuts and financial stringency over a long period of time. He also said that the effects have been gradual and have become almost taken for granted. Ivan Reid stated that it is difficult to establish whether sociology and sociology of education face threats over and above that posed to higher education in general. The intimate relationship of sociology of education with teacher education has meant that it has shared the fate of closures and cut-backs with the other disciplines of education and faced many of these well before the present situation.

'Widening participation' and increasing student diversity are currently key concerns across the higher education sector, and particular attention has been drawn to the persistent under-representation of working-class students within British universities. It is thought that widening participation in higher education (HE) can result in a number of social and economic benefits, at a national level, for under-represented social groups and for individual participants. Less is known about the viewpoints and understandings of working-class non-participants, such as whether 'official' perceptions regarding the value of HE are shared or contested. Focus group discussions were conducted with 109 non-participant Londoners, aged between 16 and 30 years, from a range of working-class backgrounds. Findings focus upon non-participants' constructions of risks, costs and benefits during application, participation and graduation. These perceptions of 'value' are discussed with relation to widening participation strategies amongst ethnically diverse 'working class' groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the recent emergence of 'working-class student officer' roles in students' unions associated with elite UK universities. These student representative roles are designed to represent the interests of working-class students within their universities and sit alongside student representatives for liberation groups and/or student communities. Based on interviews with postholders and using Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field and Reay's applications of a 'reflexive habitus', I explore how these students have come to assert a public and political 'working-class student' identity within their universities. Their commentaries reveal the 'makings of class' in a context where students are very aware of claims for recognition and the 'hidden injuries of class' and offer an insight into how working-class students are finding new ways to navigate their classed identities in HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses an analytical framework informed by social geographies to explore the complex relationships between Higher Education Institution, undergraduate student and place. Drawing on findings from a qualitative study exploring the experiences of college-based Higher Education students studying degree courses in Further Education Colleges in England, the article sees student subjectivities as structured through inequalities of institutional positioning in a stratified system as well as through layered local histories of industrial loss. Taken as an instance of undergraduate education in a massified and geographically unequal national context, the findings in this article offer an insight into the contradictory role played by Higher Education in its local area, particularly where a local area is defined by both a lack of and a need for increased educational opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the expansion of the UK higher education (HE) sector, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely than their advantaged counterparts to apply for or be offered a place at university. Whilst attempts to widen access have tended to revolve around raising aspirations and attainment, this article makes a case for the consideration of differential access to subjects seen as directly 'facilitating' university entry. Through exploring opportunity structures in three secondary schools in England (one private, one state in a wealthy area and one in a socio-economically disadvantaged area), this study highlights inequalities in the GCSE and A Level options presented to pupils. Whilst some schools provide a wide landscape of opportunities and support with constructing subject 'packages', others are left to work within timetable blocking systems which restrict subject options. Overall it argues that young people's academic portfolios must be viewed in the context of the opportunities presented to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the patterning of student im/mobility internally within the United Kingdom, using exceptionally detailed student records data on full-time undergraduate entrants from 2014. For this cohort of students, geographic mobility was clearly the preserve of the most socio-economically advantaged, and was less common for Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups. Significantly, the student’s ‘home’ region emerges as the most important factor driving im/mobility even when social, ethnic and educational differences are held constant. The concept ‘structures of feeling’ can help make sense of immobility in areas of the North-East, North-West and Wales, where students are likely to look on higher education choice through a different lens of accumulated and contemporary, inter-generational cultural experience. Exploring exceptions to the dominant trends, we also find a more complex patterning of im/mobility that is likely to reflect the deep historical and structural framing of young people’s socio-spatial horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation, this article explores Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) experiences of their work and subjectivity in a neoliberalised higher education environment. By drawing on a research project with GTAs from one UK university, the article argues that GTA work is increasingly shaped by neoliberal reforms. The GTAs interviewed are critical of internationalisation, marketisation and client culture, and see these processes as acting on their subjectivity. The GTAs position themselves as mediators between demanding students and overworked academics: they have turned into much-needed ‘peacekeepers’ and ‘machine factories’. The findings also demonstrate that the subjectivity enforced by a dominant market ideology is further negotiated in the GTA experience. The discourses reveal that a lack of institutional control and coordination of graduate teaching provides the means for, and indeed enables, the GTAs to express some, but often limited, discontent with neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research contributes to the booming literature on the mobility of international students in higher education. We analyse university-level factors that affect the sorting of Chinese international students across British universities. We produced a unique data-set merging university-level data from the 2014 UK Higher Education Statistics Agency and the Higher Expectations Survey, supplemented by qualitative evidence from six focus groups for illustrative purposes. Our results, using nationally representative evidence for the first time, confirmed that university prestige is the most important driver for the sorting of Chinese students across British universities, together with further effects of the broader social and cultural offerings that the universities provide. Interestingly, the cost of study and marketing strategies deployed by universities do not seem to drive the Chinese students’ university choices. Our findings underline the importance of diffuse institutional factors such as university rankings and their taken-for-granted status by students themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities in the United Kingdom have experienced a transformation in the context of the government’s initiatives to widen participation and rapid socio-economic changes locally and globally. With more diverse students entering higher education, universities need to consider how they can create an inclusive environment. Indeed, in order to stress their openness and (international) excellence, many universities proclaim their ‘commitment’ to diversity and difference. However, as Sara Ahmed suggests, institutional speech acts, such as a claim to promote equality and diversity, do not go beyond pluralist understandings of diversity and are non-performative. Through the examination of policies and practices concerning issues of equality and diversity in English universities, this article, firstly, considers whether universities are successful in promoting equality amongst different (ethnic) groups. Then, through a case study of a university, it examines how students become raced, classed, gendered, or nationed subjects, while they struggle to form their own agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Selling yourself’ through personal statements and interviews is now a standard practice for university applicants. This article draws on a multi-case-study research project to report on the self-marketing orientations of students within three 16–19 institutions in England. These orientations (active/passive; internal/external; retrospective/prospective; and integrated/segregated) were embedded within and shaped by each site’s strategic response to the conditions of the local education market-place. It is argued that the patterns of these orientations across different institutions is related to the resources and support available to students, the educational trajectories that were considered appropriate for them, and the pedagogic identities fostered by the institution as a whole. Where these differentially prepare students to access universities and courses, schools and colleges may be contributing to, rather than challenging, the socially stratifying work of the education system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides a comparative analysis of the discourses of widening participation used in the prospectus documents and websites of six English higher education institutions (HEIs). Taking 2007 and 2011 as snapshots, the article considers the nature of the messages being communicated to prospective students by the different HEIs in the context of the changing policy landscape. Critical discourse analysis is used to interpret the ways in which the case-study HEIs discursively positioned themselves and their prospective students – and the potential implications of this for widening participation practice. In 2007, the findings suggested sharp demarcations between the discourses chosen by the elite pre-1992 and the more accessible post-1992 institutions. By 2011, however, statements of commitment to widening participation were less overt in the post-1992 institutions, whilst there was some evidence of a shift towards a more inclusive tone by the elite universities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is suggested that major studies of mature student experience are limited by the epistemological underpinnings of their approach and that the representations they offer do not permit an adequate sociological understanding. It is then argued that conceptual tools derived from Bourdieu's sociology can facilitate such an understanding. Two segments of qualitative data from interviews with mature students and their tutors in a UK university department are used to illustrate the potential for a sociological approach which, by focusing on both the constituting and constituted nature of practices, avoids the pitfalls of objectivism and subjectivism apparent in some previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]