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This paper reprises the argument for the emergence of a global education policy field and then focuses on the shared habitus of global and national policy actors and technicians. It is argued that this shared habitus is constituted as a reflection of and a contribution to the creation of the global education policy field. Bourdieu's approach to habitus as both methodological tool and concept is used and the significance of the interview encounter to understanding habitus is argued. The authors also draw on the content of interviews with five elite policy-makers and technicians. It was found that the policy actors and technicians shared a similar middle-class embodied habitus; in terms of schemes of perception, they identified with a high-modernist confidence in both science and technology; they identified with a cosmopolitan outlook and sensibility; and demonstrated scientistic approaches that held real confidence in understanding the social through quantitative social science methods.

Aspiration for higher education (HE) is no longer a matter solely for students and their families. With OECD nations seeking to position themselves more competitively in the global knowledge economy, the need for more knowledge workers has led to plans to expand their HE systems to near universal levels. In Australia, this has required the government and institutions to enlist students who traditionally have not seen university as contributing to their imagined and desired futures. However, this paper suggests that failing to appreciate the aspirations of different groups, understood as a collective cultural capacity, casts doubt over the ability of institutions to deliver increased numbers of knowledge workers. Moreover, inciting subscription to the current norms of HE is a weak form of social inclusion. Stronger forms of equity strategy are possible when HE is repositioned as a resource for different groups and communities to access in the pursuit of their aspirations.