Fighting for funding, working-class women’s transitions to sociology doctoral education
‘Significant Academic Others’, Economic and Social Capital
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11166752 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carli Ria Rowell (0009-0004-3197-9626, University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1-22 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology of Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0142-5692 • E-ISSN: 1465-3346 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01425692.2025.2608321 |
| OpenAlex | W7130929521 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 97 |
While scholarship exploring the financial barriers for working-class students of UK higher education (UKHE) has explored undergraduate, and to a lesser extent postgraduate, taught levels, academic understandings of working-class students at the doctoral level are scarce. Addressing this lacuna, this paper draws on interviews with thirteen working-class former doctoral women students to explore working-class transitions to doctoral education, considering the role of economic and social capital in enabling or constraining their journeys. This paper conceptualises the term ‘significant academic other’ to theorise a specific form of academic social capital that, within the field of UKHE, provides access to hot knowledge (Ball and Vincent Citation1998) (doctoral funding opportunities) and thus the accrual of cultural capital that enabled the working-class students to access doctoral funding - making doctoral study possible. It calls for future research to explore how ‘significant academic others’ are drawn upon as a source of capital facilitating working-class students’ entry to doctoral study.
Capital (architecture · Cultural capital · Habitus · Higher education · Social capital · Social mobility · Social reproduction · Sociology of Education · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Selling Our Youth
Getting By
Are there distinctive clusters of higher and lower status universities in the UK?
Academic and Student Affairs Professionals as Mentors
Common Academic Experiences No One Talks About
Factors that influence university graduates’ choice of postgraduate study
Conflict and contentment
The expansion of doctoral education and the changing nature and purpose of the doctorate
Did free tuition change the choices of students applying for university admission
The Lives of Working Class Academics
Higher Education, Social Class and Social Mobility
Expansion, differentiation, and the persistence of social class inequalities in British higher education
Playing by the many rules
The Logic of Practice
All PhDs are equal but … Institutional and social stratification in access to the doctorate
Decolonizing Critical Theory
Mentoring Graduate Students
Translating Social Science Skill Sets for Careers Beyond Academia
The social science PhD
Exploring the experiences of Muslim doctoral students in UK higher education
Discourses of betterment and opportunity
Competition, competitiveness, and competitive advantage in higher education institutions
Experiential ‘hot’ knowledge and its influence on low-SES students' capacities to aspire to higher education
Diversity, Inclusion, and Doctoral Study
Deterred by debt? Young people, schools and the escalating cost of UK higher education
Is part-time work a demotivating factor for applying to high-status UK universities
Forever fields
How working-class students choose higher education. The role of family, social networks and the institutional habitus of secondary schools
Federations of academic departments
Different strokes for different folks
Higher than Einstein’
Distancing to self‐protect
Gender differences in educational attainment
University as vocational education
Private school entry to Oxbridge
Working the Borderlands
I Heard It on the Grapevine’
Get lucky? Luck and educational mobility in working-class young people’s lives from age 10–21
Bucking the trend
Negotiating the changing structure of opportunity
The burden of student loan debt
The Logic of Loans
Transforming oneself
Fitting in’ or ‘standing out’
Class matters in the interview setting? Positionality, situatedness and class
The Privilege of Choice
Read ten thousand books, walk ten thousand miles’
Fighting the tide
Miseducation
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Retaining a focus on absolute change
Exploring ethnic differences in the post-university destinations of Russell Group graduates
Higher education, social class and the mobilisation of capitals
Does Student Loan Debt Deter Higher Education Participation? New Evidence from England
Are postgraduate qualifications the 'new frontier of social mobility
Equally Bad, Unevenly Distributed
How fair is access to more prestigious UK universities
Balancing paid work and studies
Walking through fog
Does the fear of debt constrain choice of university and subject of study
What is known about doctoral employment? Reflections from a UK study and directions for future research
Why do academics do unfunded research? Resistance, compliance and identity in the UK neo-liberal university
Contemporary trends in professional doctorates
Investing ourselves
What's class got to do with it
The still-moving position' of the 'working-class' feminist academic
The Chameleon Habitus
Zoom Interviews
Moving beyond 'shopping list' positionality
I like this interview; I get cakes and cats
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries
Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling
Introduction
Interviewing Women Again
New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies
Choices of Degree or Degrees of Choice? Class, 'Race' and the Higher Education Choice Process
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |