Socio-Economic Disadvantage

We have a commitment to enhance social mobility and ensure there is equal opportunity for all, but, as not all of our students come from the same backgrounds, this can lead to some having different experiences while studying.

The lack of awareness and understanding about socio-economic disadvantage compared to other forms of discrimination can lead to students feeling excluded from our community.

The British class system (Upper, Middle and Working class) remains part of our society; however, socio-economic groups today are more complex due to a mixture of wealth (earned or inherited), earning power, type of work, as well as education blurring the lines of class.

Income inequality in the UK continues to increase, which means that people in the highest income groups have very different lives and life opportunities to those in the lowest.  In the past, social class largely determined the type of work you went into, partly because the types of work were representative of a different kind of economy, based on manufacturing and associated industries, such as mining. There was little movement between classes. 

Developments in the late twentieth and twenty-first century have created massive change in the economy and workplace allowing people to choose a career, rather than slot into class expectations as well as move and mix across the socio-economic groups.

Different cultural experiences 

Sociologists talk about people having different forms of ‘capital’, i.e. the assets that they have.  Although assets usually refer to material assets like money or property, another form is ‘cultural capital’, which is being familiar with certain norms, practices and experiences. 

Student Quotes:

I was in class and the lecturer was talking about the Tate Museums and I looked around and saw people nodding and it was obvious they assumed we’d all been to them.  I’ve never even been to London let alone to all these museums.  It made me feel like a bit of an imposter, I didn’t really belong. 

People from private schools or grammar schools seem more used to having a more equal relationship with their teachers and parents and more used to approaching them and asking questions or speaking up in class. 

As a Scottish student I did Advanced Higher and Higher Maths, whereas most other students did A levels and in A level you do a lot more than in Advanced Higher Maths, so I think there’s a bit of a divide there in terms of knowledge, but that’s just how the curriculum works. 

In a tutorial or a seminar when you're in a group of people the voices that you've heard are definitely the ones that have been in private school and they're very much comfortable in a small group setting because that's what they used to.  At my state school that was hard in a class of 30 with one teacher at the front. 

When I came to uni I wanted to write for the student paper and join the student theatre but it took me two years to get the confidence to do it as I wasn’t sure I had the qualifications.  But then there are people who literally just come to uni thinking, the world is my oyster of course they want to hear from me.  

Different family support 

Student Quotes:

For my first essay for English Lit I was writing about Paradise Lost, which I’d never heard of before coming to uni and another girl said, “Oh I’m just going to send my Dad the essay because he did his PhD on it, so I’ll just get his advice.” 

I’m the first person in my family to go to uni.  But the others have been told about university from a very young age.  It feels familiar before they even get there.  

I was asking my friends to look over an essay for me and they suggested showing my parents.  And they were shocked when I was my parents wouldn’t even know what half of these things mean, because their English isn’t that good as they’re immigrants. 

They really don’t understand that their idea of financial difficulties is not the same as theirs.  They’ll say they know what it’s like, or that they’ve struggled with money, but that’s not true, they don’t have a clue.  It’s not just about my Dad not having a brilliant wage, it’s that without the wage, there’s nothing to fall back on. 

Being shamed by more privileged students 

Sometimes students are inadvertently or deliberately shamed by their more privileged peers, for example, for their clothing, perceived level of knowledge or for their accent.   

Student Quotes:

I’ve had people say to me, “you can’t be working class because you’re at university”, as if having a superior intellect and being working class can’t go together. 

We were discussing inheritance tax in class and people have explicitly said that they have more money because they ‘just worked harder’.  “We deserve it because we just really, really worked hard for that.  And they said to me maybe if your parents had worked harder at school they could have done a little better.  My father is a manual labourer but I don’t think he works any less hard than their Dad at his desk job. 

When you first meet someone that power dynamic in terms of your social background is an instantaneous thing.  There’s an assumption about certain cultural things.  You can see where they put their gaze, on my shoes or bag, for example.  I think for students from widening participation backgrounds, that really undermines your confidence. 

These quotes represent a selection of views and experiences from University of Edinburgh students.


Tips on counteracting socio-economic microaggressions and creating an inclusive environment:

  • When you meet new people, be curious about their interests and aspirations rather than only their background 
  • Don’t assume that everyone’s life or family is like yours
  • Recognise that people’s knowledge is different to yours but no less valuable  
  • Seek to challenge some of the unhelpful and untrue mythology linking the relationship of wealth to intelligence or hard work.
  • Make space for everyone’s voice to be heard.
  • Educate yourself about different forms of discrimination to recognise when comments or behaviour may be harmful or upsetting to others.
  • Familiarise yourself with the University’s Dignity and Respect policy, which provides the framework we expect our students and staff to follow to help create a safe and inclusive culture for everyone in our community.

People who come from elites have a much greater chance of becoming financially successful and take on leadership positions - regardless of educational attainment -resulting from a variety of factors, such as elite education, exposure to rich cultural experiences, parental networks and familial support. To different levels, upper-middle and middle classes will similarly benefit from such advantages but to different degrees.

You might never have thought about your place in relation to your socio-economic background and class before coming to university, as it’s likely that you will have attended a school with people similar to you, and your family and friends will tend to be from the same background as you.   

At the University of Edinburgh, we believe that all capable young people deserve an excellent Higher Education regardless of their background.  We recognise that people from lower socio-economic groups often don’t have the same level of support and encouragement to go to university despite being extremely academically capable, so we have taken measures to address this. This is often known as ‘Widening Participation’.   

At the University of Edinburgh, students who come from middle to lower socio-economic backgrounds are in a minority.  However, in the wider UK society, they are the majority. When we asked our widening participation students, we found that they were often unprepared for the experience of being ‘othered’ because of their background, leading to a strong sense that they did not ‘belong’ at the University.

Discover more examples of privilege through an intersectional lens here.

I guess I knew I was working class but I’m not sure how much it was really present to me when I was living at home.  Like so many people I know from home, it was only going to uni that made us realise how working class we are.  It’s so weird being isolated, surrounded by middle class and privileged people.  Now I just assume I’m going to be surrounded by people who are better-off than me.

 


University Resources 

Further Reading 

References 

  • Finnegan F & Merrill B (2017) ‘We’re as good as anybody else’: a comparative study of working-class university students’ experiences in England and Ireland. British Journal of Sociology of Education 38(3) https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1081054 
  • Tett L (2016) Mature working-class students in an ‘elite’ university: Discourses of risk, choice and exclusion. Studies in the Education of Adults 36(2) https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2004.11661500 
  • Thiele T, Pope D, Singleton A, Snape D, Stanistreet D (2016) Experience of disadvantage: The influence of identity on engagement in working class students’ educational trajectories to an elite university 43(1) https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3251 

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