Higher Education Inequalities

Higher education is not the same experience for everyone, or is it likely to offer the same rewards for all. Clegg (2010, p. 93) claims that while higher education should be “widening participation and extending opportunities”, that instead, many higher education institutions “systematically reproduce inequalities of both experience and outcome”. This essay will argue that education, and especially higher education in Australia is not meritocratic, and that rather, the interconnected theories of cultural capital and habitus interact to provide an explanation for the inequality that low social economic status (SES) students regularly experience in higher education. Despite increases in overall higher education participation, SES inequalities remain prominent (Clegg 2010, p. 93), and these inequalities are easily identified within patterns of enrolment, university type, and course type. Within this essay, the overall number of enrolments from students of a low SES background in …show more content…
Additionally, the type of universities, and the types of courses that students of a low SES background tend to be enrolled in will be discussed.
Unfortunately, many people from low SES backgrounds believe that higher education is not a suitable option for them. Archer, Halsall, and Hollingworth (2007, p. 220) offers insight into the reasons for non-participation in higher education as well as the alternating views of working class and middle class students that are produced by multiple inequalities. Cultural capital is able to account for these inequalities and can be defined as various forms of knowledge, acquired skills, education, and advantages that a person has, which may enable them to achieve a higher social economic status in society. Archer, Halsall, and Hollingworth (2007, p. 234) proposes that working class people’s