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This paper discusses Pierre Bourdieu's multi-faceted understanding of the higher education process by considering the evolution of this domain since the end of the 1970s both in France and England. Following a brief review of Bourdieu's main interpretations of higher education, several theoretical shifts in his thought and practice over time are identified that have sought to accommodate the rapid changes that have occurred in the higher education sector in recent years. This theoretical repositioning is used to reflect on ideas of homological reasoning advanced by Bourdieu and others, and their limitations in the cross-national comparative exercise. Using the findings of her own comparative study of the evolution of the French and English higher education sectors, the author tests some of the conceptual tools developed by Bourdieu mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, and discusses claims for their universal validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of ethnic and racial statistics has become common in a growing number of institutional settings. Yet contemporary approaches to race and ethnicity suggest that the very process of compelling people to assign themselves to one of a small number of racial or ethnic 'boxes' is, at best, essentialist and, at worst, racist. This article will explore this problematic terrain, and venture a pathway through it, with the aid of findings from a study of ethnic minority English and Welsh student teachers' attitudes to ethnic classification. The discussion comprises three parts. The first sets out to provide a brief theoretical analysis of the genesis of ethnic monitoring within the modern state. It is concluded that ethnic monitoring may usefully be regarded as a problematic necessity, a process that itself needs constant monitoring. With this agenda in place, we move on to assess the implications of our findings on student teachers' attitudes to ethnic monitoring. Their pointers for reform are discussed in the third and final section of the paper, where the policy implications of research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an ethnographic study of vocational students in a tertiary college in England who intend entering a service industry which expanded in the 1980s and is predicted to expand into the next decade. The paper focuses on a social class and gender mixed group of mainly 17-19 year-old Business and Technology Education Council National Diploma students in the second year of their course at "Gastronomic Tertiary College" in a northern heavy-industrial city. The field-work was conducted throughout the academic year 1988-1989, the author being a participant observer with a group of about 20 students throughout their time in college. The majority were from working-class backgrounds, mostly skilled social class III, and the minority from social class II. The data are derived from recorded individual and group "conversations with a purpose" held during the college day, together with field notes. Although the concept of correspondence has been invoked, it has been argued that the dynamics of reproduction take place on contradictory cultural terrain, characterised by contestation and conflict, no matter how latent and corporate.