Search

This article examines student accounts of credentials, talent and academic success, against a backdrop of the enduring liberal ideal of an education-based meritocracy. The article also examines Bourdieu's account of academic qualifications as the dominant source of institutionalised cultural capital, and concludes that it does not adequately account for comparative differences in the social structure of competition and ideological shifts in class (re)production in different national contexts. This analysis is based on an empirical investigation of elite students at Oxford University and Sciences Po in Paris. We investigated how they understand the competition for a livelihood and whether they see themselves as more "talented" than students from non-elite universities. This investigation revealed important similarities and differences between British and French students that have significant sociological implications for the (re)production and legitimation of educational and labour market inequalities.

There has been renewed policy interest in intergenerational social mobility as a route to a fairer society, but in ignoring the sociological evidence this article will argue that the current policy agenda will fail to achieve its goal. Based on an analysis of "social congestion", "social exclusion", and "social justice", it also argues that existing sociological research on education and social mobility needs to be extended. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, the experiences of working-class and middle-class students and families are not defined by intergenerational social mobility, but by social congestion and an opportunity trap.

In this paper it will be argued that we are entering a 'third wave' in the socio-historical development of British education and that similar trends are also evident in the USA, Australia and, New Zealand. The 'first wave' can be characterised by the rise of mass schooling for the working classes in the late nineteenth century. The 'second wave' involved a shift from the provision of education based upon what Dewey called the "feudal dogma of social predestination" to one organised on the basis of individual merit and achievement. What is distinct about the 'third wave' is the move towards a system whereby the education a child receives must conform to the wealth and wishes of parents rather than the abilities and efforts of pupils. In other words, we have witnessed a shift away from the 'ideology of meritocracy' to what I will call the 'ideology of parentocracy'. This paper will consider the evidence to support this conclusion and examine its sociological significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]