Class Influences in Higher Education

S ummary . A survey by questionnaire, completed by 414 students at Bristol College of Science and Technology, and designed to provide a profile of student background and activity, was followed by interviews with ninety‐seven of these students. The interviews were concerned primarily with student motivation to higher education and especially with the influence of home background. Analysis revealed that there was a substantial proportion of students, largely from working class homes, whose parents were indifferent or hostile to their children's higher education, and for whom the C.A.T. formed the highest acceptable aspiration; that working class students who lacked family support for higher education and who had not been motivated to continue their education by school or peer groups, had formed this aspiration after experience in the work situation and had often received the necessary support from their firms; that some working class students found higher education in a sandwich course at a C.A.T. acceptable because of its job orientation, whereas a full‐time university course was not; and that lack of confidence and lack of knowledge were also factors inhibiting students whose families had no experience of higher education from applying to a university

Class (philosophy) · Higher education · Mathematics education · Medical education · Pedagogy · Political science · Working class · Higher Education Research Studies · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology

• The Expansion of Educational Opportunity and the Changing Role of the Student

  Open Access•Joan Abbott•Social Policy and Administration•1967

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