Heffernan, T. (2023). 'The History of the University'. In: The Marginalised Majority in Higher Education: Marginalised Groups and the Barriers They Face. Palgrave Macmillan

 This chapter has only served to reinforce my thoughts that the HE sector seems to have lost its way at some point in the last 50 years and is undergoing something of an identity crisis that only those working within it can remedy. Heffernan discusses issues related to who is within the 'circle of power' (i.e. NOT the marginalised groups) and the general perception of HE that it is a luxury and simply a way to waste a few years building up debt. He explains the process of how this came to be; and of how a huge boom in universities in the 80s and 90s, where demand outstripped supply, has inevitably led to a situation where supply is now far outstripping supply and universities are having to compete for students, which costs money in itself. 

This situation seems to have a number of causes - economic downturns, rising costs of living, COVID and less governmental demand for the research and innovation that was championed after WWII. The post-war drive for occupations to become professions requiring university level training has levelled off as employment opportunities for graduates have dwindled, leading families who may have encouraged their children to go to university to fail to see the benefit of HE if it's not going to lead to higher wages. 

Of course, much of this can be mitigated through the innovative route of higher and degree apprenticeships, which my PhD aims to explore. However, a key point that comes from this reading is that it speaks to the sense I have that HE has lost its way and that society is missing the point of HE. If we only see HE as a short-term, direct route to higher status and higher pay work and if our understanding is that that is the only way it impacts on society and the economy, we are failing to see the far more profound (but less direct) benefit of the hidden curriculum inherent in HE when done well. 

I hope my work will contribute in some way to a different way of valuing HE and that it will be able to demonstrate how HE can transform lives by showing that it is not just higher wages that enables people to live well - that the ability to think critically, understand evidence, be reflective and skilled at responding effectively to challenges represents the truest gains from studying at university. The next step will be how we communicate this and how society's (and the government's) perception of HE can be altered as well.

References

Heffernan, T. (2023). 'The History of the University'. In: The Marginalised Majority in Higher Education: Marginalised Groups and the Barriers They Face. Palgrave Macmillan

Heffernan, T. (2023). 'Introduction', 'Higher Education Through a Bourdieusian Lens', 'Bourdieu's Primary Theories'. In. The Marginalised Majority in Higher Education: Marginalised Groups and the Barriers they Face. Palgrave Macmillan.

 The first three chapters of this book introduce Heffernan's work unpacking the ongoing inequity in higher education. He details how marginalised groups are less likely to complete their degrees, have lower grades and less post-graduate employment and pay. His argument is essentially that a lot has been done to increase inclusion in HE and that marginalised groups now make up the majority of those studying or working at university. However, this has not translated into increased equity and the power is still held by those with privilege i.e. those who have grown up within a habitus that affords them more of the capital that is traditionally valued in the field of HE. In fact, both Bourdieu and Heffernan argue that this maintenance of the power imbalance is intentional, something that is echoed in Gatto's work (1991). Heffernan argues that it is the "role of the marginalised academic and social justice researcher" to drive more effective change (p. 11). His work uses Bourdieusian theory to understand this issue of marginalisation in HE in order that we can improve the current power imbalances. 

My work, I hope, could contribute to Heffernan's by deepening our understanding of the experience of those people who go through HE, particularly those who do so despite needing to step away from their cultural trajectory in order to do so. By exploring people's narratives of their educational experiences to date, it may also help to understand the situation through Bourdieu's ideas that compulsory schooling is likely to "continue or amplify" the effects of the habitus into which a child has been born (p. 27.)

Heffernan also describes the changes in HE over the last few decades that have impacted on the current HE situation. With increased pressure from governments to focus on direct and immediate gains afforded by HE, it seems that HE has lost sight of its original raison d'être - to develop and disseminate new knowledge, thereby improving lives for all. It's almost as though the drive to greater inclusivity has come at the cost of this deeper, less tangible progress that HE creates. Or maybe there is simply correlation here, but not causation? Whichever it is, I think there is work that needs to be done to not just increase inclusivity, but to change the ethos of HE so it is focused more on developing and sharing knowledge and on transforming lives (and, indirectly, society)...which, by default, will require not just inclusion of marginalised groups but active leadership from such groups. HE has potential to really break the cycle Heffernan describes of social capital leading to success in education, which leads to greater social capita.. 

References

Heffernan, T. (2023). The Marginalised Majority in Higher Education: Marginalised Groups and the Barriers They Face. Palgrave Macmillan

Gatto, J. T. (1991). Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. British Columbia: New Society Publishers.

Smith, S., Taylor-Smith, E., Fabian, K., Zarb, M., Paterson, J., Barr, M., Berg, T. (2021). A multi-institutional exploration of the social mobility potential of degree apprenticeships. Journal of Education and Work. 34:4. 488-503.

 I am starting my notes on this early on in the reading coming, as it is very soon after reading Heffernan (2022) and the thoughts that inspired in me. The introduction of this article focuses on discussing the concept of social mobility, which has led me to consider the difference between social mobility and quality of life. My work seeks to understand the transformational nature of HE for individuals, particularly those who enter HE through less-traditional routes. However, although I have been searching for articles that talk about social mobility, I am wondering more and more how this is related to quality of life and, indeed, if it is at all. 

I think I may need to read more into what it is about deprivation that decreases quality of life, particularly when it is not abject poverty. Obviously, everyone needs enough money to eat healthily and feel secure, but beyond this, could it be that the associated lack of self-worth, sense of agency and all the other mindset-related issues that impedes quality of life? If those psychological factors change but not income, do we still see an improvement in quality of life? 

So far, this article focuses heavily on the goal of degree apprenticeships allowing more people to enter higher status, higher paid professions. However, this suggests that policy-makers have decided themselves that this should be the goal based on the rather reductionist idea that more money will always mean better lives. The authors demonstrate that we are beginning to see saturation within the high-status, highly paid job-market and that, as a result, fewer graduates are able to work within these sectors. Interestingly, they also refer to the need for applicants to have the capital required to be successful applicants to these roles - something that is far easier for those from more advantaged backgrounds and which refers to the Bourdieusian concept of fit. 

I would argue that this emphasis on the goal being access to higher status, higher paid work may actually miss the point of higher education. Heffernan (2022) describes how the doxa (a term used by Bourdieu) of higher education has changed over time from being an environment for broadening minds to one focused far more heavily on its contribution to the economy. My sense is that my thoughts on this are in the early stages of forming into something more concrete but that my argument is that some of the well-established ill-effects of poverty (at least above a certain level of poverty!) may well be mitigated simply through the deschooling impact of good higher education. Smith et al. begin to allude to this when they describe social mobility as being:

"more akin to a consideration of upward education mobility where by offspring of non university-educated parents seek higher education" (p. 490)

but they take this exploration no further than this.

(I also think I need a better term than 'quality of life' to describe this because what I am discussing is more about a sense of feeling empowered within one's life.) 

When discussing the issue of saturation, Smith et al. argue that some of the responsibility must lie with employers in terms of the importance they attach to HE qualifications. However, again this speaks to the issue of the perceived value of a degree vs. what that degree symobolises. When done well, I would argue that HE is about far more than simply a higher qualification. It is about what one learns about oneself and the place one holds in the world that is the true value of a HE qualification.

Another issue this article raises for me is the authors' explanation of the widening participation drive in HE (although they demonstrate that degree apprenticeships are still more likely to be taken up by more advantaged groups than the groups they were initially aimed at). The authors discuss widening participation solely in terms of making higher education more accessible to those from less traditional backgrounds but fails to dig into the issue of what happens to these students once they are enrolled. There is no discussion on the varied and complex needs such students may have and how HE needs to adapt to meet those needs.

The findings of the research suggest that there is wider participation in HDAs when apprentices are recruited to them by employers wanting to upskill existing employees. When employers recruit directly to apprenticeship posts, they still tend to recruit those from groups that traditionally go to university anyway. The authors argue that employers have a role to play in working towards contextual hiring into apprenticeship roles in the same way universities seek to make contextual offers in order to widening participation. However, I argue that this still all speaks to the need for higher education as a whole to rethink its raison d'être and to work towards communicating that raison d'être more effectively. I would argue that the indirect benefit to society of having the kind of empowered, healthier, happier and more productive citizens that should be possible through experiencing the personal transformation that good higher education can facilitate, must surely be far more impactful than the surface-level, direct impact on the economy that the Government (and society) seems to think comes simply from more people having more degrees so they can do higher paid, higher status work. My belief is that the process of deschooling that can be afforded by good higher education should be its true, and overtly communicated, raison d'être and that we should be actively seeking to change society's perception of HE from one of pure 'go to university to learn more things and join the elite' to one of 'go to university in order to learn how to live life better'.

Another finding of the research focused on the financial situation of apprentices and the fact that an HDA represents a route into HE usually unavailable for anyone without the financial means to pursue further learning. This means that higher education can move from being a luxury to a societal norm. However, the article also highlights the issue of working while studying also means apprentices have more pressure to manage their time. I would argue that this is not a true issue given firstly that many (56% according to the latest HEPI Student Academic Experience Survey (Neves et al., 2024)) non-apprenticeship students find they have to work to fund their studies and, in fact, an experience such as this will support apprentices to learn valuable, transferable skills about time-management, self-care and personal resilience that will serve them well in the rest of their lives. 

References

Neves, J., Freeman, J., Stephenson, R., Sotiropoulou, P. (2024). Student Academic Experience Survey. York: Advance HE. Available at: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/SAES-2024.pdf (Accessed: 7 March 2025).

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Habitus'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 27-47.

 The third chapter of this book explains Bourdieu's concept of habitus and its role in the practice (or success) of an agent (individual). In the chapter abstract, Heffernan describes habitus as:

"...the combination of the elements and aspects of someone's life that they are born into, raised in, and surrounded by throughout their life that shape them as an individual." p. 27.

and explains that those with a similar habitus will likely follow a similar cultural trajectory through the course of their lives. He also explains how habitus is connected to and influenced by both field (the area in which an agent is operating at any given time and capital, whether that is hard capital (such as number of degrees) or symbolic capital (who an agent knows or who is prepared to endorse and support an agent). The habitus of an agent impacts on how well they can operate within a field, something that is also influenced by the capital that agent possesses and how valued that capital is within the field they are operating within. When the habitus and capital of an agent fits well within a field, this is known as 'well-informed habitus'. 

One of the important points I have taken from reading this chapter is that, as already discussed, Bourdieu was writing in a time where issues of intersectionality were not widely acknowledge, however they are extremely relevant to his work. 

As our habitus is shaped not only by our family and community lives, but by our schooling, the way we value (or not) the concept of education will be highly connected to our previous experience of it. Thus, it is not only the sense of self-belief that is required for someone to change their cultural trajectory but also the need for them to see the value in the field they are moving into. To my mind, the need for academics to communicate the value of HE is essential and that we need not to assume anyone on our courses appreciate that value in the same way we do. Indeed, Heffernan is clear that access to an opportunity does not necessarily correlate with the aspiration to take up that opportunity - a choice that can be conscious or subconscious (as described later in this post in terms of conditioning). An agent may know very well that their habitus and capital will not fit well within a field they are seeking to operate within and they may choose not to accept the extra pressure and risk that taking such a different cultural trajectory could cause. Or it may simply not occur to them that such an opportunity could be open to them. 

One issue of schooling Bourdieu highlights is the imbalance of power between the habitus of those who teach in a school (usually middle-class) and the working class children they may be teaching (and their parents). This suggests that, as things stand, schooling really can perpetuate these social inequalities and barriers by alienating some children and their families. In this way, Bourdieu argues that habitus can create negative as well as positive structures. 

Another element is how different habituses and fields can overlap and interconnect, meaning that someone may have valuable capital in various different fields. This is something I'd like to reflect on in my own work, being someone brought up within a complex cultural situation - middle-class, education-valuing on one side and highly upper-class, elite schooling society on the other. On top of this, I work across two fields as an academic - health and social care; and education. It is interesting to me to consider the capital this has afforded me and how it may, or may not, be valued in either field. However, this varied social, personal and professional history does mean I am somewhat cushioned from the consequences others risk by breaking away from their cultural trajectory - that of finding their habitus no longer fits so well with their roots. 

I would argue it is important for my work to explore the potential consequences for students for whom HE-influenced transformation may create a poorer fit for them with their previous roots. Bourdieu describes how the community an agent is raised in and then later lives within conditions their habitus. The term given to how we unconsciously incorporate the requirements of a field into our own habitus is hexis. This speaks to something I alluded to in my last post - the need for the field to adapt to ensure it is a better fit for all habituses rather than expecting agents to change themselves in order to fit the field better. Students should not need to change themselves in order to be successful within the field of HE if the capital valued by HE is that of coming from what Bourdieu describes as the knowledge classes (as opposed to the labouring classes); or who the student knows; or the alignment of habituses between senior academics and the student; or the shared interests, values and history between peers. 

It may be that some of this is less relevant for a cohort of apprentices who may well have similar habituses and cultural trajectories. It may also be less relevant for students on health and social care courses, given that these professions are traditionally associated with the labouring classes. Indeed, this overlap between traditional labouring classes work and knowledge class education systems may well be worth exploring within my own work.

NB: The later chapters of this book are focused more heavily on describing the situation of working within academia, rather than on student experience, so I will write no further blog posts on this book, but I do plan to read more on Bourdieu to understand how his work can help to illuminate my own.

References

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Habitus'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 27-47.

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Introducing Bourdieu and Higher Education'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 9-26.

 This chapter gives an overview of the context within which Bourdieu developed and communicated his theories. He was born in 1930 and worked within the French higher education system from the late 1950s to his death in 2002. As well as describing Bourdieu's background, Heffernan outlines the key criticisms of his work, some of which interestingly bear some relation to those of Critical Theory:

• That he was writing within a time period not easily generalised to the present
• That his work was based solely on his experiences and observations of the French higher education system, which is not necessarily applicable to the global system
• That he only seemed to focus on the inequalities associated with social class and failed to recognise the experiences and challenges faced by other marginalised groups including women, the disabled and those from a black or minority ethnic background
• That his work at times seems to some to be purely about the theory rather than the application of the theory to practice (although Heffernan seems to refute this later in the chapter).

He was, however, a qualitative researcher who embraced the value of quantitative research to understanding social issues, sharing my own views that people and their experiences are too complicated to be described by statistics alone. 

Bourdieu developed his 'Theory of Practice', which interrogated the contemporary positivist research into teaching, learning and pedagogical practice. He sought to understand what was behind the findings of that research and their relationship to culture and society.

Another key term described by Bourdieu is that of 'cultural trajectory', which describes the expected path someone takes as a result of the social circumstances into which they are born and within which they are raised. He argues that those whose cultural trajectory differs from what is expected of them (e.g. people who, like Bourdieu himself, are born into socially disadvantaged communities but 'break out' and move into academia) do NOT have the same opportunities as those who were 'born to it'. Essentially, the concept of 'equal opportunity' does not apply when one considers issues associated with social privilege. This element of who is supported by the system to succeed and who is held back by 'socially imposed barriers' (p. 21) is very important to my work and I have scanned the pages where this is discussed to refer back to (pp. 20-21).

"Therefore, while the working-class child can overcome those barriers, and the middle-class child may choose not to walk through the open gates, Bourdieu's work and this theory of practice tells us that society has encouraged and made 'success' easier and statistically far more likely for the the middle-class child, and because of that, the middle-class child is more likely to succeed."

(p. 21) 

 Essentially, Bourdieu is trying to debunk the myth of 'hard work or merit = success'. He argues that those who do not 'fit' the system because they have arrived within it from a different cultural trajectory than their peers are less likely to question the system due to a sense of obligation to the institution that has 'allowed them in'. He suggests that, rather than relying on merit, academic success actually rests on the concept of 'capital', which, as well as being influenced by quality of work, is more strongly associated with wealth, social advantage and social connections. 

One last point I would like to pick up on, is that Bourdieu does refer to the impact of universal schooling on maintaining the cultural trajectories set by children's social standing at birth. My argument is that HE should be about disrupting these structures and not just 'allowing in' those who do not 'fit' the system, but using the system to drive true social change. These inherent imbalances of power are harmful and this work speaks to the need for those of us with social power to proactively work to flatten these hierarchies. Again, this should not be by the elite opening itself up to the disadvantaged but by the elite seeking to completely dismantle the social structures that perpetuate such inequalities - including those of us working in higher education.

References

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Introducing Bourdieu and Higher Education'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 9-26.

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Introduction'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 1-6.

Heffernan seems to be writing and researching in the same area I am. This book is an amalgamation of much of his research in the area of higher education policy and administration and, in particular, inequity in the sector. He is currently based at the University of Manchester, but was previously working in Australia. 

The introduction to the book has prompted me to think that there may be a need for a small section on the history of higher education in my thesis, which could help illustrate how the primary objective of higher education appears to have changed. Some of this appears, on the face of it, to be negative - a shift from institutions focused solely on the acquisition and sharing of knowledge to a business model reliant on revenue generation. However, as Heffernan reminds us, the shift has also been from an exclusionary institution to one that welcomes (and, with widening participation, actively encourages) women, people of colour and those with disabilities and from different cultures. 

I think this book is going to be helpful in providing context for understanding the impact apprenticeships are having on the sector, in particular the perception of the intention of higher education. From my learning to date, I would argue that higher education should be about teaching people how to think, how to learn and how to communicate through the acquisition of knowledge (whether through teaching or research). As things currently stand, it seems the current driver is for higher education purely to deliver knowledge with the intent to increase earning potential and that it is this that creates social mobility and reduces inequality. My argument is that it is actually that 'hidden curriculum' of having the tools to become curious, critical, creative thinkers capable of lifelong learning, development and of communicating to share knowledge (i.e. the original aim of higher education). I would argue that it is the widening participation in higher education that drives social change; not the fact that larger numbers of people know more things and can earn more money.

References

Heffernan, T. (2022). 'Introduction'. In. Bourdieu and Higher Education. Singapore: Springer. pp. 1-6

Gillen-O'Neel, C. (2021). 'Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement: A Daily Study of First- and Continuing-Generation College Students'. Research in Higher Education. 62:45-71

This research is US based but is important to my work firstly because it looks at first generation university students and secondly because of the insights it affords into the concept of 'belonging' and its impact on higher education study. Gillen-O'Neel (2021) discusses the theories that suggest a connection between a sense of belonging and the maintaining of motivation required to succeed, supporting this with a large body of evidence (p. 45-46). 

Her research asked students to record their daily sense of belonging and their daily levels of engagement in order to look for possible connections between the two. She also looked at differences between first- and continuing-generation students. One of the reasons for this is the higher number of first-generation students that report lower levels of sense of belonging as well as differences in the impact of that low sense of belonging. She seeks to explore the hypothesis that first-generation students are more likely than continuing-generation students to experience low engagement when they are feeling a low sense of belonging. This is relevant to me because UK data suggests a far higher proportion of first-in-family students on apprenticeship programmes than in other courses (61% in 2021/22 (Office for Students, 2023); compared to 43% across the sector (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2024).

Gillen-O'Neel cites work completed by Walton and Cohen (2007) that describes this increased sensitivity to fluctuations in belonging as 'belonging uncertainty' particularly among those from backgrounds associated with negative stereotypes. This suggests that universities must be mindful that coaching students as they 'deschool' is not a 'one and done' action, but should be a long, iterative process over the course of their university time in order to embed a new, stronger way of interacting with their studies. Of course, it is likely all of this will have been impacted by prior educational experiences: if students spent school in the 'bottom sets', how likely is it that they will feel they 'belong' in an environment that has been sold to them as being solely for 'clever' or 'academic' people?

This research found that it may be that increased engagement actually causes an increased sense of belonging. This is relevant for apprenticeship students who are required to attend classes, offering academics golden opportunities to deliver this 'deschooling' work through relationship-building and 'training' in autonomous learning.

Gillen-O'Neel describes the concept of 'student engagement' as something multidimensional, which includes emotional and behavioural elements. To me, this feels a lot like 'mindset', but Gillen-O'Neel writes about it in terms of something that can fluctuate day to day, rather than something fairly static, in the way Dweck (2017) writes about it. Maybe they're not the same but simply closely connected. According to Gillen-O'Neel, the emotional element relates to how students respond to school or university - are they interested and engaged or bored and frustrated? And the behavioural element relates to what students do both in and outside of school. My questions are, as with mindset, where are these things learned and what is HE's role in addressing them? Gillen-O'Neel's findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between all these elements and that sense of belonging, engagement, resilience etc. are all interconnected. Should this mean that university academics need to think of 'deschooling' as a complex, multi-faceted process? Indeed, Gillen-O'Neel argues that many of these challenges facing these students are structural rather than internal to students. Some of this structure will be based within the institution itself but I think there is a need for academics to have a deep understanding of the social structure from which all students are coming and what the impact of those structures can be on people.

Three key theories mentioned in this paper that I want to read more about are Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000); Stage-Environment Fit Theory (Eccles et al., 1993) and Social Identity Threat theories (e.g. stereotype threat (Pennington et al., 2016)). Gillen-O'Neel puts these three theories together with the hypothesis of belonging and argues that students will have greater success and satisfaction when institutions prioritise meeting students' core developmental needs, one of which is 'belonging' (the third level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow, 1943)).

References

Dweck, C. (2017). Mindset: How you can Fulfil your Potential. New York: Ballantine Books.

Eccles, J.S., Midgley, C., Wigfield, A., Buchanan, C.M., Reuman, D., Flanagan, C., Iver, D.M. (1993). 'Development during adolescence: The impact of stage-environment fit on young adolescents' experiences in schools and in families'. American Psychologist. 48(2):90-101

Gillen-O'Neel, C. (2021). 'Sense of Belonging and Student Engagement: A Daily Study of First- and Continuing-Generation College Students'. Research in Higher Education. 62:45-71

Higher Education Statistics Agency. (2024). 'Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2022/23 - Student numbers and characteristics'. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/08-08-2024/sb269-higher-education-student-statistics/numbers (Accessed: 6 February 2025).

Maslow, A. H. (1943). 'A theory of human motivation'. Psychological Review. 50(4):370–396.

Office for Students. (2023). 'Annex C: Characteristics of OfS-fundable starts on Level 6 degree apprenticeships'. Available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/8857/annex-c-characteristics-of-ofs-fundable-starts-on-level-6-degree-apprenticeships.pdf (Accessed 6 February 2025)

Ryan, R.M., and Deci, E.L. (2000). 'Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and well-being'. American Psychologist. 55(1):68-78

Pennington, C.R. et al. (2016) ‘Twenty Years of Stereotype Threat Research: A Review of Psychological Mediators’, PLOS ONE. 11(1)

Walton, G.M., and Cohen, G.L. (2007). 'A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement.' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 92(1):82-96