Global education policy discourse is based on an unshakable belief that more and improved skills will promote economic prosperity, global competitiveness and social inclusion. In England, the Further Education and Skills sector (FES) has emerged as the vehicle to deliver these skills. However, the portrayal of FES as focusing primarily on…

Drawing on the narrative inquiry of 32 in-depth interviews with parents of sons who study in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields in tertiary education, we described the multi-dimensional picture of intergenerational mobility and reproduction derived from the Big Class, Microclass, and Cultural Mobility Models. We…

As undergraduate degrees have become increasingly common and their relative value has declined, employers increasingly look for evidence other than human capital that can distinguish one candidate from another. Both social and personal capital are important in this respect, but also create disadvantages for university graduates from less…

Shonda L. Goward argues that conflating first-generation and low-income status elides the specific and significant barriers poor students experience. They may share the experience of not being familiar with the university system, but the challenges of food insecurity, jobs, and family responsibilities, along with a lack of a safety net, make it…

The neoliberal agenda promotes education as a route toward success in university and career. However, a neoliberal economy requires large numbers of workers willing to accept low-paying, dead-end jobs. The students most likely to take these jobs are those who have struggled with literacy and so schools must, in Bourdieu's terms, re/produce,…

This article describes the work of Oscar Lewis, Paul Willis, and John U. Ogbu, who used the concept of culture to explain the difficulties some children had in schools. Although Lewis, Willis, and Ogbu were well trained as ethnographers and their work influenced educators, critics complained that their explanations did not fit their evidence. The…

Stable, healthy marriages and relationships can bolster the economic security and well-being of adults and children. However, reality is much more complex. Relatively few children currently live in families with married parents in which only the father is employed. In fact, more than half of U.S. children today will spend at least part of their…

Economic inequality is high and rising in a number of developed countries, including in the United Kingdom and the United States. There are growing concerns that this may have negative implications for equality of opportunity, and the extent to which social disadvantage is transmitted across generations. It is widely believed that providing…