By Dr Carli-Ria Rowell, University of Sussex and current GEA Co-Chair.
In this short blog post based upon my recently published article in British Journal Sociology of Education (Rowell 2026) I cast light on the enduring role of economic capital and access to knowledge in shaping educational pathways and decision making. I reflect on the economic insecurity that class inequality casts over educational opportunities, even in the lives of those considered to have succeed in education. In doing so I argue for greater systematic support pertaining to inclusion of working-class students at the doctoral level if we are to diversify higher education knowledge production and to take seriously historical epistemological injustices with regards to the classed politics of knowledge production and inequalities of representation.
Reproduction in education thrives off of one’s (in)ability to access knowledge. Knowing what counts as valid and worthy, having a feel for the unwritten rules that open doors for some and lock out others. At the highest level of educational attainment then, one would be shocked and surprised perhaps then to learn that access to doctoral funding (and subsequent doctoral study per se, for working-class students) is seldom based on one’s academic accolades but rather who they happened to be taught by. Afterall, education is a meritocracy, right? It’s not who you know but what you know? Wrong, as my research illustrates. In the case of being working-class and accessing doctoral funding then, having access to a ‘significant academic other’ (Rowell 2026) opens the possibility and probability of doctoral study as I discuss below.
Within the UK, and elsewhere higher education has moved from an elite to mass system of enrolment, it nonetheless remains a deeply classed sphere. As Walkerdine reminds us, higher education continues to operate as a classed pathway and bastion of classed knowledge (Walkerdine 2021) especially so given academia’s classed ceiling (Friedman and Laurison 2019). Whilst there exists a plethora of research illuminating the experiences of working-class students at the undergraduate level and to a lesser extent the postgraduate researcher level, working-class access to, experiences of and outcomes pertaining to doctoral education remain largely absent. This was thus the imperative and motivating factor shaping my research exploring working-class women’s experience of navigating access to and through (and out of) doctoral study. Funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education (Rowell 2026) the research sought to explore the way(s) in which a working-class background shaped experiences of doctoral study, in doing so the research revealed the enduring nature of economic inequality upon access to higher education at the doctoral level.
Whilst unpacking the experiences of thirteen working-class cis women’s journeys to doctoral education within the discipline of Sociology it became apparent that access (or not) to economic and social capital deeply structured their progression to and entry into doctoral study. All of the working-class women I interviewed had received funding – and – without exception would not have been able to afford to pursue doctoral study otherwise. The working-class women’s arrival at securing funding was by no means seamless nor linear, but often the outcomes of starts, stops and circling back round as they attempted to navigate the unfamiliar journey of navigating doctoral fundings.
For many of the participants, the inability to pay straight up for doctoral study was exactly what precluded them from embarking on a seamless academic trajectory and not having access to economic capital resulted in fractured academic journeys. More profoundly however, access to economic capital through securing research funding (what I refer to as ‘accrued economic capital’) was foundational in equipping participants with the necessary economic capital allowing them to embark on doctoral study possible.
A common theme and thread throughout participants narratives was the role that academics, who were also from working-class background played in supporting students accessing doctoral funding. Such academics, I refer to as ‘significant academic others’, a conceptual tool to theorise a specific form of academic social capital that, within the field of UKHE, provides access to hot knowledge (Ball and Vincent 1998), in this case: doctoral funding opportunities. ‘Significant academic others’ were drawn upon as a source of capital facilitating working-class students’ entry to doctoral study; it is through their ‘significant academic others’ that the working-class women were equipped with the right knowledge (cultural capital) of how to navigate the postgraduate doctoral fundings landscape. Most of the working-class women (all but one) were made aware of doctoral funding opportunities through their ‘significant academic other’ as opposed to more systematic practices, such as university or funder information dissemination outlets. It demonstrates how, for the working-class participants of this research acquiring the economic capital required for doctoral study was not a straightforward process or the results of structural widening participation initiatives but the result of lucky encounters with their ‘significant academic others’ (often too from working-class backgrounds).
I call on universities and funders to deliver targeted and systematic support aimed at making known, to working-class student communities the opportunities for doctoral funding and to make clear the unwritten rules of game that enable some to secure such funding over others. If we are serious about the inclusion of working-class students at the doctoral level, then we must take seriously inequalities in access.
References:
Ball, S.J. and Vincent, C., 1998. ’I Heard It on the Grapevine’: ‘hot’ knowledge and school choice. British journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3), pp.377-400.
Friedman, S. and Laurison, D., 2019. The class ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged. Policy Press.
Rowell, C.R., 2025. Fighting for funding, working-class women’s transitions to sociology doctoral education: ‘Significant academic others’, economic and social capital. British Journal of Sociology of Education, pp.1-22.
Walkerdine, V., 2021. What’s class got to do with it? Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 42(1), pp.60-74.
Images:
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