Events

Abstract:  A large body of research has highlighted the difficulties facing “first-generation” students compared to those who have parents who have attended universities. Ideas about cultural capital focus instead on the privileges of those originating in families at the top of the social hierarchy. According to cultural capital theory, educational institutions teach not only, technical skills, but class cultures, vocabulary, tastes, values, and manners.  Students who display high-status cultural signals tend to receive the highest rewards, such as high grades.

 These ideas were developed during the 1960’s and 70’s; their relevance for today’s mass universities, as well as for educational fields outside of the humanities, has been questioned. For example, why would cultural capital affect performance in mathematics, engineering, or physics? This paper adds to the knowledge about the impact of social class origin among students today, by studying academic achievements in the total population of students who entered Bachelor studies or five-year professional programmes in Norwegian higher education between 2010 and 2020. What kind of social origins are most strongly linked to academic success? Does the impact of social class origin vary between educational institutions and across educational fields?  And to what extent is the association between social class origin and academic performance in the universities mediated by inequalities in performance at lower educational levels, or by differences in the amount of paid work the students do? Norway is a well-suited context for addressing these questions, due to centralised procedures for admissions to universities based solely on secondary level grades, as well as centralised grading policies aimed at comparability across educational fields.

 The Oslo Register Data Class Scheme  (ORDC) is used to study class inequalities in academic performance. The principles behind the construction of this scheme and previous applications are explained. The analyses uncover a highly systematic pattern of class inequalities, though varying somewhat between educational fields. Students originating in the cultural upper classes tend to receive the highest grades, also compared to their co-students originating in the economic upper classes. 

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Bess Bukodi and Colin Mills For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.