In this paper I will highlight the different aspirations to future employment of students from six higher education institutions with different academic development characteristics and different institutional cultures. I will refer to them as Asymmetric Higher Education Spaces. My main argument is that institutional configuration intervenes in important ways in the students’ capacity to aspire. Students’ aspirations are guided according to the norms and principles promoted by the universities they attend, but do so differently according to the student’s gender and social level. Aspiration to higher education is high in every social stratum, but the higher the social stratum of the student, the higher the aspiration to higher education and the higher the chances of attainment. This is so because realization is strongly tied with the cultural capital that the students possess and plays an important role in the decisions they make regarding their education (McDonough, 1997). Furthermore, the higher the prestige of the higher education space where students receive their education, the higher the advantages they have access to. This is because more prestigious higher education spaces offer a broader structure of opportunities to secure differential advantages, specially in terms of academic formation, but also in terms of access to social and information networks, two key resources to aspire for a better job (Duru-Bellat, 2006; Dubet, Duru-Bellat y Vérétout, 2010). In this sense, the main concern of this paper is to compare the work aspirations of two groups of students from a gender perspective: those who wish to carry out graduate studies and those who do not. My point of departure is that social stratum and gender point to categories of belonging that imprint people with a hierarchically differentiated social position that carries with it implied relations of power (Lamus Canavate, 2012). Based on the methodology explained in the symposium’s abstract, this paper involves students in their first and last year of undergraduate studies. The questions that guide my work are: • How do higher education spaces with different configurations intervene in student’s aspirations to keep studying? • How do these wishes modify work related aspirations of students with different sexes and from different social strata?

McDonough, P. (1997). Choosing colleges: how social class and schools structure opportunity. New York: State University of New York Press. Duru-Bellat, M. (2006). L'inflation scolaire. Les désilusions de la méritocratie. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Dubet, F., Duru-Bellat, M., & Vérétout, A. (2010). Les sociétés et leur école. Emprise du diplôme et cohésion sociale. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Lamus Canavate, Doris, (2012), Raza y etnia, sexo y género: El significado de la diferencia y el poder. Reflexión Política [en línea] 2012, 14 (Sin mes) : [Fecha de consulta: 16 de septiembre de 2017] Baillergeau, E., Duyvendak, J. W. and Abdallah, S.
(2015), Heading towards a desirable future: aspirations, commitments and the capability to aspire of young Europeans. Open Citizenship, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 12–23. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/275180045_Heading_towards_a_desirable_future_Aspirations_commitments_and_the_capability_to_aspire_of_young_Europeans (Consultado el
7 Febrero de 2017). Baillergeau, Evelyne and Jan Willem Duyvendak (2016) Social inequality and young people in Europe: their capacity to aspire, pp- 155-156, World Social Science Report 2016, UNESCO and the ISSC, Paris.