Speaking Their Language: The Unwritten Rules of Elite Education
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Reflexivity, Relativism, Postmodernism: just three words thrown into my first ever seminar. I felt unqualified, needing a dictionary to understand classmates’ words. I was not prepared: my schooling focused on ‘passing exams’ and ‘getting qualifications.’ Nothing on confidence, originality, or wider concepts of subjects. My peers seemed fluent in ‘University 101’ before stepping foot inside its corridors.
I had worked hard, exceeding expectations at my college. Now I was behind in my first hour. Was higher education just ‘not for me’?
This is a phenomenon many state school or lower-class students face when achieving their desired university causing a disproportionate drop-out rate. Can students break the cycle and become socially mobile? How can universities keep disadvantaged students in education after getting them there?
Imposter syndrome in disadvantaged students is not a personal weakness; it’s ingrained in the system. Widening participation programs are encouraging contextual offers reflecting specific students’ inaccessibilty to education. This ensures obstructions to quality learning, such as working or caring responsibilities, do not continually affect future prospects for students. However, widening participation programs risk creating an us/them dichotomy in higher education, where alternative entry paths become markers of difference, socially and academically. Attitudes to widening participation programs isolates the very students they aim to help.
Explaining AccessUCL, my classmate declared he should’ve ‘milked’ his parents not attending university to ‘make it easier.’ For context, he was provided with ample tools to succeed: role models, advice from boarding school, and limited financial pressures given his family’s wealthy business. A lack of class consciousness insists that equity is an ‘easy’ way into higher education, and disregards the obstructions experienced by others. This perpetuates an imposter syndrome by confirming the doubts of being undeserving of a place; it ignores the additional work required to achieve an equal standing. How can universities communicate the necessity of widening participation programs to students that fail to recognise their privileges?
Students disengage with their privilege for fear of ‘unrelatable.’ Performative declarations of ‘broke-ness’ sit alongside £4 daily coffees, reading week ski trips, and nightly drinking sessions. Downplaying financial privilege whilst silently benefitting from it paints an unachievable expectation for disadvantaged students, causing further alienation.
To integrate, students shift their priorities and neglect their degree, either through exhausting jobs or socialisation. The pressurised ‘catch-up’ game soon weighs heavy on the student. These invisible privileges prevent less fortunate students from forming social connections and achieving the grades necessary for future success.
Beyond finances, I became familiar with the ritual: a sea of Stussy-clad students demanding I repeat 'bath’ and ‘water,' laughing at my northern pronunciation. Accent discrimination masquerades as innocent curiosity yet crystallises into hierarchies. Several schools have banned slang or idioms to promote ‘proper’ English. Consequently, they protect the white upper class’ pedestal and subdue others according to race and class. Further, accent bias hinders career progression; casual microaggressions towards regional differences overlook the serious implications of growing up in a less fortunate environment..
The ability to reach these key career stages is inadvertently privileged. Applying to internships doubly disadvantages those in the state sector. Not only have state school students been disproportionally unexposed to careers programs, but have also been denied an inherited network of professional connections. Limited access to role models or field contacts means that disadvantaged students are outcompeted by nepotism. Students seemingly ‘fall’ into internships, or conveniently forget the influence of former connections on their application. Misleading appearances of recruitment perpetuates a cycle whereby disadvantaged students refrain from furthering their career due to initial discouragement.
The meritocracy is dismantled when excelling in your circumstances still leaves you behind. Despite reaching the top of my classes, I couldn’t ‘catch up’ with inherited advantages of schooling or connected parentage. Universities cannot single-handedly bulldoze class hierarchies and privilege, but they can foster class consciousness.Unmasking the invisible privileges through class awareness will push disadvantaged students to access the necessary services to ‘close the gap’. Targeted services like UCL’s Careers Extra, or the 93% Club, help disadvantaged students gain confidence and overcome initial discouragement. These programs only work when privilege is highlighted, not normalised.
A shift from privilege blindness to privilege awareness could be the difference between dropping out and accessing dream careers. The choice is clear: protect the monopoly on education and occupations, or shatter this glass ceiling.