It doesn’t really matter who you speak to and at what level from student to Professor there is a consensus that the British Higher Education system is on its knees and so are most of those that work within it, albeit for many different reasons. Some are on their knees and begging, some are on their knees and receiving and some of us are on our knees too exhausted to stand up. I doubt that many apart from those few right at the top of the higher education system the Vice Chancellors, the Ivory Tower Professoriate elite and the super-bureaucrats would disagree.
British Higher Education, or as students call it ‘Uni’ is in a bad way. Lets be honest its too expensive, students aren’t getting value for money and £9,300 a year tuition fees are vastly over-inflated. Of course the super-bureaucrats and the Vice Chancellors will contest this, the Elite Professoriate won’t even be aware of it. They will argue that education is expensive, they will argue that students don’t have to pay this back until they are earning a premium wage, and they will argue that its fair. The very last thing this is – is fair, we have a two-tier higher education system perhaps even 3 tier, there might be 4 by the time I have finished writing this. And that is because the University Industry traces the British class system it works along side of it, and it supports it, reinvigorates it, reproduces it and legitimises it. A report that recently came out showed the students at the London School of Economics will earn the most money after finishing their degree.
I am sure that the LSE are very happy with this, and are extremely comfortable in taking the accolades that will come with this news. But the truth is the LSE cannot really take credit for their students earnings, in exactly the same way that other Universities mostly, non-Russell Group, that were once Polytechnics, local arts and drama schools, teaching colleges, and nursing schools that amalgamated to create what we now call Post-92s meaning they became Universities Post 1992 can be blamed that their post-graduates will earn approx. 45% that students from the Russell groups Universities will. The truth is that the British class system can take the credit for all of the gains and losses. Students that already have good and excessive amounts of social, cultural, symbolic, and economic capital will choose a University that has a student body that matches or exceeds their own class position, and the same goes for the students that choose a Post- 92 University, the consequences of this is Universities like everywhere in Britain are classed. That does not mean that working class students wont be found in Oxbridge or at the LSE but when they are - they are as rare as rocking horse shit, equally it does not mean that middle class students cannot be found in the Post-92s although the middle class usually search for an accessible Russell Group University before they will apply for a Post-92. None of this is really news, we all know that education is the biggest determinate for social mobility or for no mobility at all and reproducing the status quo. However it is the money and fees that have changed, despite Universities having a range of fee structures it could use, nearly all of them charge the highest possible amount. This means that the students at the Russell group Universities get to graduate with all the symbolic, cultural and social capital that a Russell Group University enables will be in an equal amount of debt to students that are from working class backgrounds and are looking for a University they can attend that is local to them and that they can get in. This is unfair, it is not right and everyone in the University sector knows this, the amount of debt that students are getting into is incredible £50,000 if you take out the maintenance loans which all working class students have to.
How are the Universities reacting to this? Well the Russell Groups are very happy their students can receive excellent teaching, and benefit from that cultural, social, and symbolic capital locked into those institutions through the British class system, the Post 92s also offer excellent teaching to students, I have worked in both, and my experience of University Faculty and support staff is that they care about students, and are committed to providing education. Yet the Post 92s do not benefit from the cultural, social and symbolic capital. Therefore the Post 92 management system tries to counter this social class phenomena with bureaucracy, they know that the students social class and background will really determine how employable or earning potential the students really have. Some Post 92s are doing really interesting things around this social problem, by connecting the Universities to the local communities, using the students local knowledge, and their connection to the area the University is in to capitalise on the strength of locality, and stability working with local businesses, NGOs and creative sectors. However not all Universities which have a social, cultural, symbolic capital deficit do this. Others flail around and try and justify fees of over £9k a year that are unjustifiable by turning towards and on their faculty. They want students to ‘feel’ like they are getting value for money, lectures and seminars get longer and longer, student contact time becomes untouchable to the point that academics are afraid not to answer emails at weekends and in the evenings, and feedback has to be inexhaustible where many academics are giving feedback 3 and 4 times on various stages of essay writing, for every essay and every student.
Simultaneously the Russell Group Universities continue to accumulate their social, cultural, symbolic and economic capital by ensuring that their student body, and their faculty members also have high amounts of symbolic capital, resulting in a faculty that are mostly white and middle class, privately educated, and or from Oxbridge. This is compounding class inequality and class reproduction through the University system.
This is not about the student, this is not about teaching, this is not about knowledge or education this is about justifying an unfair system, a system that is heavily producing and reproducing class inequality, and the really heart wrenching thing about this is that students are getting into debt and academics are making themselves ill in order to maintain this system.
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