This paper draws upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1993) to examine the relational positioning of graduate students and elite universities as they compete for economic, social and cultural capitals at a time of risk and uncertainty characterised by Donald Trump’s presidency in the US and Brexit in the UK. It draws upon a larger project that explores how these capitals are the stakes in global economies in which both students and universities position and legitimise their highly privileged interests.

This paper uses in-depth interviews with 49 graduate students attending elite universities in the United States and United Kingdom to explore their experiences and understandings of privilege and the transfer of capitals. The research explored both student’s journeys to elite universities, their feelings of discomfort and comfort when navigating the social spaces at their institutions and their expectations for the future.

This paper addresses two specific research questions. Firstly, to what extent did graduate students at elite universities believe they were legitimately entitled to the privileges that derive from such institutions? Secondly, how did graduate students understand their positioning within the global field of influence associated with their respective institutions.

In respect of the first question, many students shared commonly held understandings that elite universities reproduce social inequality whilst also acknowledging their own personal legitimacy when accessing the privileges offered by membership of the elite. Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of doxa, that is the everyday, common-sense assumptions that are widely held within society, was one tool used to understand both individual and institutional positionings. The role doxa plays within these multi-relational structures is to assert the institutional claim to authority; it is not just that the university and its members believe in the elite privilege, but rather that this is also held to be true generally by those outside these institutions. The maintenance of influence and status across wider fields is significant because it is, ‘a state of power relations’ in which individuals and the institutions engage in a struggle to redistribute and accumulate capitals (Bourdieu 1993: 73). The research explored graduate students engagement with these wider institutional struggle for capitals and willingness to accept their legitimising narratives of their own individual capabilities.

In respect of the second question the paper explores points of similarity and dissimilarity in the experiences of elite graduate students on both sides of the Atlantic. It delineates how the local experience of attending a global elite university entails membership of mobile, global communities linked by shared understandings of privilege. Whilst the backdrop of potentially unsettling political developments in the US and UK points towards futures in which many lives are likely to be disrupted; the experience of being an elite student hints at processes that ensure the future stability of their lives.

4 universities were chosen due to their position and ranking in league tables. They all regularly score highly (top 10) in university league tables for teaching and research excellence and are well known internationally on a global scale. A snowball sample was used for the selection of respondents. Once the universities were selected, personal contacts were used to recruit respondents to participate in the study in the UK and USA. The contacts described the research to students in one cohort and asked them if they wanted to participate. If they agreed, they were asked to participate in the research and given detailed information about the study. Respondents were studying on a range of different courses which included Humanities, Social and Physical Sciences. Forty nine students participated in the study. All were enrolled on graduate degree courses, 45 were studying for a graduate degree by research (PhD) and 4 for a graduate taught degree (MA). A total of 14 students were studying at university 1 (UK), 13 at university 2 (UK), 15 at university 3 (USA) and 7 at university 4 (USA). The ages of respondents varied from 22-34, and they were from a range of different ethnicities. A total of 28 respondents were female. Face to face interviews were conducted with 40 respondents and 9 interviews were conducted via Skype. A total of 30 interviews were digitally recorded and for all other interviews hand written notes were taken during and after the interviews, at the request of the respondents. All of the interviews were either transcribed or typed up for analysis. Interview data was analysed using thematic analysis and cross checked to ensure accuracy, consistency and validity. Thematic analysis was used as ‘a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns within data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 76). It enabled patterns to be identified across the data set to derive meaning from these patterns. The analysis consisted of coding and developing themes, defining and naming themes and reviewing the themes. Examples of emergent codes included family background; prior educational experiences; fitting in and belonging, identity, exclusion and privilege. These emergent codes were then developed to form conceptual analyses based on specific concepts such as doxa, habitus and capital.

This paper suggests that graduate students attending elite universities in the UK and USA are engaged in relational struggle for capitals shaped both by their prior access to a range of capitals and also by institutional competition for capitals. As Bourdieu (1993) would note this process is one in which students and institutions are actively complicit; including students who noted their ‘discomfort’ with elite universities. Such complicity stretches beyond the confines of the institutional structure and graduate students themselves, as status and privilege embedded in local, national and global economies. Students described an elite form of habitus, shared predispositions that facilitated access to elite universities shaped by past experiences but also integral to their positioning and relational status in their current social world (Bourdieu, 1977). They described deploying prior knowledge to legitimise their current membership of elite institutional spaces; including the credentialised capital of undergraduate study at elite universities, knowledge of institutional practices, and to a lesser extent pre-existing social networks. Many students gave comprehensive accounts of the advantages of attending elite universities and of social inequalities that shaped such access. Despite this, they consistently suggested they earned their places based on intelligence and hard work. One particular theme to emerge out of their routes to elite universities, experiences at university and expectations for future careers, was a link between greater mobility and membership of a global elite university. This allied both with the global narratives of universities and also within students’ investment in beliefs about ensuring personal stability in the future. Such positioning legitimised in individual and institutional accounts also finds wider credibility beyond the worlds of elite universities. Not only do elite graduate students understand their own privilege and believe in its legitimacy; this is a view shared more generally across the globe.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice (Vol. 16). Cambridge: Cambridge university press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question (Vol. 18). London: Sage. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.