Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 4
students might be expected to show 'relative risk aversion' based on the cost of doctoral study and its uncertain
outcomes. Drawing on interviews with over fifty graduates and PhD students from different types of English university,
this British Academy funded study provides a detailed investigation of the role of finance in the decision to pursue
doctoral study. The results suggest that access to funding is necessary, but not sufficient for doctoral participation and
tends to become a barrier at the point a graduate had opted to pursue doctoral study. Perhaps surprisingly, debt was
almost absent from our respondents' accounts and did not feature as a deterrent. However financial considerations
disproportionately drove decision-making for poorer students who were forced to 'follow the money'. Considering
doctoral study in the first place appears more closely related to cultural factors and gender.
OK Commuter: Comparing Academic Attainment and Cultural Capital among Resident and Commuting
Students at an English University
Hensby, A., Mitton, L., Almeida, M.
(University of Kent)
Recent studies have shown that a growing number of English students are commuting to university from their family
home, sometimes travelling a considerable distance. Whilst for many students this represents a financial decision
following increases in tuition fees and campus accommodation costs, it can also reflect students' emotional ties and
obligations to family and friends, and their need for paid work. Yet research indicates that limited access to the
campus can impact negatively on students' learning outside the classroom, their academic engagement, and
attainment (Buote, 2007). Moreover, the commuting population comprises a higher proportion of those students
targeted for widening participation – including BME, mature, and working-class students. This raises important
questions about the consequences of commuting on students' sense of belonging at university, particularly in the
context of dominant discourses of the student learner as 'white, middle-class and male' (Read et al, 2003).
Drawing on original survey data of undergraduates at an English university, this paper juxtaposes the socio-economic
backgrounds, learning expectations and cultural capital on campus of commuting and resident students. Contrasts are
drawn both between students' study routines and their participation in co-curricular opportunities on campus. Our
emerging findings indicate significant variations in the experiences of learning for commuting and resident students.
Without consideration of the diverse educational and social support needs of commuting students in HE, the aim of
closing the attainment gap between traditional and widening participation students is unlikely to be realised.
Peer Influence and Gender Inequality in Undergraduate Academic Major Choice: A Field Theoretic Approach
Redd, R.
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
Undergraduates' field of study is intricately linked to inequality in the US, where women continue to be less likely than
men to complete STEM degrees. This gendered variation in major selection has substantial implications for
stratification: undergraduate major choice is closely related to labor market outcomes and advancement to future
degrees. Building on recent theoretical developments from John Levi Martin's social aesthetics and field theory, this
paper argues that academic interests are developed in concert with encounters in the environment, and that position
in academic fields at the start of university, gendered distributions of interest patterns, and peer influence play a
critical role in gender differentiation in undergraduate major choice. Using unique administrative data from an
American university, I deploy multiple correspondence analysis to show that students' interests are organized in
academic fields characterized by oppositions between sciences and social sciences, economics and humanities, and
life and hard sciences. Movement between disciplines that are close together in students' interest spaces is common.
Because students' interests are organized in academic fields, peer influence on academic major choice is better
understood as a field effect. Utilizing random roommate assignment at this university, the paper shows that choosing a
major is associated with roommate's interests coming into college, and this association depends on students' own
initial position in the academic discipline space when applying to university. Finally, because women are less likely to
have roommates who are in sciences and engineering, gender segregation of roommates contributes to gender
difference in STEM outcomes.
163 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University