“You Always Remain Slightly an Outsider”: Workplace Experiences of Academics from Working‐Class or Impoverished Backgrounds

Waterfield, Bea; Beagan, Brenda L.; Mohamed, Tameera

doi:10.1111/cars.12257

Cited by 22 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…The use of the Holistic Career Framework to analyse individual career decision-making through an in-depth analysis of the fields of play can offer explanatory power for understanding individual decisions and wider organisational issues. For example, understanding that economic capital can be readily acquired but that organisational success may be dependent on the accumulation of white, upper-middle-class cultural capital (Waterfield et al, 2019), makes clear why higher education, as with many other organisations, still does not proportionally represent women, people of colour, or differently abled staff at senior levels. Habitus is re-created, and through symbolic capital, where a social group has been deemed superior to others, this confers social advantage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Holistic Career Framework: Integrating Bourdieu and career theory

Gander

2022

Australian Journal of Career Development

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This study sets out to argue for the interplay between structure and agency to create a deeper understanding of careers. Using Bourdieu's Theory of Practice as an integrative framework for career theory, this study sets out to answer two questions: (1) does the concept of a Holistic Career Framework add value to the career debate by placing emphasis on both agency and structure? (2) does a Holistic Career Framework help link theory with practice? One hundred and thirty-nine career stories from university professional staff were analysed using a narrative approach, coded and thematically analysed for overarching patterns. The Holistic Career Framework was used as a lens to further understand individual career needs and decisions. By analysing the career stories of university professional staff, and understanding the context in which they operate, a deeper understanding of career behaviour and decision-making is provided.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Holistic Career Framework: Integrating Bourdieu and career theory

Gander

2022

Australian Journal of Career Development

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“…Black faculty earn less money despite no measurable differences in productivity [56] and may have their research evaluated less positively [57], all while facing unequal service burdens and racism on and off campus [58]. While research on how socioeconomic status shapes faculty careers is less comprehensive, work generally points to less supportive environments [24,25] and differences in research or teaching appointments [59]. Individuals may become faculty and still have difficulty finding support within academia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the socioeconomic backgrounds of faculty are poorly understood, as are the ways they influence gender, racial, and geographic diversity. Nevertheless, it is known that professors from lower socioeconomic backgrounds report hyper-awareness of how those backgrounds impact their careers [24], and that these different roots make them feel like cultural outsiders in academia [25]. Socioeconomic status may also interact with job placement within academia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty

Morgan¹,

Clauset²,

Larremore³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Tenure-track faculty play a special role in society: they train future researchers, and they produce much of the scholarship that drives scientific, technological, and social innovation. However, the professoriate has never been demographically representative of the general population it serves. For example in the United States, Black and Hispanic scholars are underrepresented across the tenure-track, and while women’s representation has increased over time, they remain a minority in many academic fields. Here we investigate the representativeness of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and whether it may implicitly limit efforts to diversify the professoriate in terms of race, gender, and geography. Using a survey of 7218 professors in PhD-granting departments in the United States across eight disciplines in STEM, social sciences, and the humanities, we find that the estimated median childhood household income among faculty is 23.7% higher than the general public, and faculty are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD. Moreover, the proportion of faculty with PhD parents nearly doubles at more prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible mainly to the socioeconomically privileged. This lack of socioeconomic diversity is likely to deeply shape the type of scholarship and scholars that faculty produce and train.

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“…It is unsurprising then that a major theme in the data was the students' relative isolation compared to their more privileged peers. Like the Canadian students in the study by Waterfield et al (2019), this isolation was imposed as well as chosen. Psychic survival necessitated a reclaiming and re-assertation of their academic capital and confidence at the cost of developing social capital and confidence but they also confronted processes of exclusion within the field.…”

Section: So Cial and Cultur Al Hier Archie S And Their Impac T On Smentioning

confidence: 99%

The working classes and higher education: Meritocratic fallacies of upward mobility in the United Kingdom

Reay

2021

Euro J of Education

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The uniformly positive view of social mobility in the United Kingdom overlooks the difficulties working‐class young people have in reconciling a working‐class background with the middle‐class environments of the university and the professional labour market. But even more hidden are the subtle processes of exclusion and exclusivity that permeate social life in, particularly, the elite universities. Here, working‐class students' marginalisation in relation to advantageous social activities and networks, compromises their chances of later success in the labour market. This paper scrutinises working‐class students' experiences of elite higher education through the lens of Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capitals and field. Drawing on a research project on working‐class young people who gain entry to elite universities it analyses the disjunctures between working‐class habitus and the field of elite higher education, focusing on the emotional and social consequences for working‐class students. The findings raise concerns—largely unexplored in existing research—about working‐class reception in elite fields. The paper concludes with a call to look beyond the attitudes and actions of working‐class students to those of their upper‐ and middle‐class peers, and the culture and ethos of the elite universities.

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“You Always Remain Slightly an Outsider”: Workplace Experiences of Academics from Working‐Class or Impoverished Backgrounds

Cited by 22 publications

References 23 publications

A Holistic Career Framework: Integrating Bourdieu and career theory

A Holistic Career Framework: Integrating Bourdieu and career theory

Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty

The working classes and higher education: Meritocratic fallacies of upward mobility in the United Kingdom

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