University working class students in Spain: experiences in a more elitist university.
Author(s):
Delia Langa (presenting / submitting) Sergio Ariza M. Carmen Martínez
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Format:
Paper (Copy for Joint Session)

Session Information

14 SES 01 B JS, Higher Education, Family Influence and Dropout

Joint Paper Session NW 14 and NW 22

Time:
2017-08-22
13:15-14:45
Room:
K5.14
Chair:
Loizos Symeou

Contribution

The changes at the university in Spain due to the so-called crisis have stressed the barriers and limitations for the working-class students, which in fact have always existed for entering and staying at the University. The implementation of the Bolonia process in 2010-11, on the one hand, and the raising of tuition fees as result of Real Decreto ley 14/2012 on the other hand, has created a new landscape much harder for working-class families to send and maintain their children at the University. Besides we must mention the changes in scholarships system from 2013: the decrease in the number and proportion of scholarships, and the measures that has become grants system in a competitive one. The new policies are being implemented in the last years are pointing to an increase in the individual and private funding of higher education costs and expenses for students. And before that, we must take account the growth of the private sector in Spanish Higher Education system (very important since 1990).

In this context we are going to do a qualitative approach to working-class students that remain at University. We want to analyze by their discourses if they are making changes in their strategies in any senses: choices of degrees, academic tasks, obtaining grants, paying tuition fees, work, living condition, etc., as a way of adapting to the radical changes of the new university institutional rules. 

In this paper we are focusing in processes of choices: styles of choices (contingent, local choices, risk avoiding), sense of entitlement, and how the dependence on academic achievement in working class students is being reinforced with the last political measures at university.

Method

In the current Higher Education context of reforms, we consider very appropiate to approach to social dimension of university students. That is the main goal of our project. Taking account the characteristics and purposes of our research, we think is pertinent the choice of a qualitative or structural methodology, in the sense of the so called “Critical Sociology” (Ibáñez,1979, 1986; Ortí, 1986 ; Alonso, 1998). We try to find out the sense that people give themselves for their behaviors. That is why we are going to approach to our research object trough an immersion in the world of language. In this way “language” constitutes an object and besides a resource in our research (Ibáñez, op. cit): we want to examine the practices of working class students through their discourses. We understand students as “strategic subjects” (Bourdieu, 1988) and we try to situate their practices and experiences in the social space in which the take place and meaning. In other words, our project is especially interpretative as we aim to explore the social way in which educational preferences are configured. So our analysis will be based mainly on the discourses of in depth interviews to working class students attending different degrees.

Expected Outcomes

We have special interest in replicating the research made in last nineties in which we pointed a clear feeling of debt in relation to their families in students from lower social origins. (Langa, 2005a, 2005b,2005c, 2006, 2013). We are contrasting now how this feeling of debt, or sense or no “entitlement” , enhances a stronger tone of meritocratic moralization in their educational bets that, for example, makes working-class students specially dependent on academic achievement. Students from working class families are very dependent on how academic achievement may lead to potential social mobility and yet they have to defer economic independence. This dependence is expressed both in the initial choices which can explain part of the current inequality in the rates of university attendance from different school and family backgrounds and throughout their educational career. This latter for example, may lead to the consideration of whether to combine studies with some type of labour market involvement in the case of unsatisfactory results, loss of grants,and/ or difficult courses.

References

ALONSO, L. E. (1998) La mirada cualitativa, Ed. Fundamentos, Madrid BOURDIEU, P. (1988): La distinción. Crítica social del juicio, Madrid, Taurus. IBÁÑEZ, J. (1979) Más allá de la sociología. El grupo de discusión: teoría y crítica, Ed. Siglo XXI, Madrid. LANGA ROSADO, D. (2005a): Los estudiantes y sus razones prácticas. Heterogeneidad de estrategias de estudiantes universitarios según clase social, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Servicio de Publicaciones. LANGA ROSADO, D. (2005b):”La dedicación académica de los estudiantes universitarios: una propuesta de carácter comprensivo”, en Témpora, 8, 159-187. LANGA ROSADO, D. (2005c): “La “juventud” de los universitarios construida desde distintas posiciones de clase. Nuevas manifestaciones de las desigualdades en el campo educativo, en Revista Española de Sociología, 5, 71-89. LANGA ROSADO, D. y DAVID, M. (2006), “A massive university or a university for the masses’: Continuity and Change in Higher Education in Spain and England”, en Journal of Education Policy, 21, nº 3, 343-365. LANGA, D. y RÍOS, M. (2013): “Los estudiantes de clases populares en la universidad y frente a la universidad de la crisis: persistencia y nuevas condiciones para la multiplicación de la desigualdad de oportunidades educativas”, en Tempora, 16, 71-96. ORTÍ, A. (1986) “La apertura y el enfoque cualitativo o estructural: la entrevista abierta semidirectiva y la discusión de grupo” en García Ferrando, Ibáñez y Alvira (comp.) El análisis de la realidad social, Alianza Editorial, Madrid.

Author Information

Delia Langa (presenting / submitting)
Universidad de Jaén, Spain
Sergio Ariza
Universidad de Jaén, Spain
M. Carmen Martínez
Universidad de Jaén, Spain

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