ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the continuing problem of social class in the age of mass higher education. It highlights the actual experiences of working-class students in UK higher education, drawing on data from Economic and Social Research Councils (ESRC) projects of classed experiences of higher education in the twenty-first century. In an ESRC project on working-class student's experiences of higher education, Reay et al. found that students subjectively moved in and out of different identity constructions between university and home in ways marked out by class, ethnicity, and gender identifications. The assumption is always that it is the working-class individual who must adapt, change and participate in the higher education institutional culture. So to conclude, there is increasing evidence of growing social class stratification of opportunities in higher education. Instead of reducing social class stratification and enhancing social mobility, mass higher education in the twenty-first century is replicating the social class inequalities found across the school system and wider society.
