I wrote a short piece on this a couple of weeks ago, which ended with a range of questions:
1. Do our students leave here with the “right” social and cultural capital?
2. Would it be possible to build this into a modular award structure?
3. Would students understand the benefit of material that is not subject based?
4. Who decides what is appropriate socially and culturally?
5. Would any work on this be based against groups (eg BME) who may have a different view of appropriate social and cultural capital
6. Is this the responsibility of a University?
Clearly I don’t have any answers yet to these, but a number of conversations since I wrote this suggest that there might be something here worth pursuing.
A meeting with the VC and Chief Executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, where we looked at a range of diversity and equality issues, was one where he raised the idea of inequity due to differing levels of social capital.
In today’s Observer, an article describes how Debretts’s is now providing courses (a snip at £1000) on “social intelligence”:
“the Debrett’s research flags up rising concerns among business people about the employability of graduates and school leavers who have been tested to the maximum academically, but have no notion of what to expect from a job. The accusation is that schools and universities are so focused on academic targets that they are failing to produce rounded graduates. Instead they are turning out young people who are shy and awkward after spending all their time on the internet or mobiles, who lack the ability to spell or write a letter, and are unable to get through a day without regular online checks on what their friends are up to.”
Ignoring the claims that technology might be to blame (and although the online world can be dominant, there also has to be a recognition of its importance), there are suggestions that a number of employers are coming across graduates with excellent grades but who don;t have the other key social skills necessary.
It seems therefore that there might be something here for us as a University to look at. The critical question will how we do so. On the one hand, this will be an excellent area for research, linking together ideas from sociology and education. At the same time though, as well as developing a theoretical understanding we would need to develop practical approaches that could have a real impact on students.
After discussions with colleagues in Education, then it is apparent that the more important area might be that of social capital, where:
“We think of capital as being of two types. Bonding and bridging. Bonding ‘glues’ you in to a place / way of being / approach etc . Bridging gets you out of it. We actually need both types of capital. Bonding gives us a sense of permanence and security but it can also restrict us and stop us growing beyond what we are. ” (M Lowe)
In addition there are the concerns about how we might state what we feel is important or necessary social capital (as I suggested previously), particularly in a region (Stoke on Trent) of low educational aspiration, and where we need to recognise that there may be very strong social capital already (particularly of the bonding type) which it would be unreasonable to challenge, while at the same time trying to identify how we could increase the amount of bridging capital. (discussion with K Vigurs)
Based on a project bid I have just completed, I have a particular interest in how we could build in some of these ideas into a set of postgraduate attributes, as a way of enhancing employability beyond high level subject expertise.
Interestingly, at least one author (Moss, Electronic Journal of Sociology (2005) ISSN: 1198 3655 “Cultural Capital and Graduate Student Achievement:A Preliminary Quantitative Investigation”) suggests that the Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital may not apply to graduate students, although the author acknowledges he used a small sample, and concludes:
“Further research is needed in order to confirm or refute this study’s preliminary findings. Graduate level education is a prerequisite for virtually all high-status careers. If students who undergo such education are in fact subject to educational inequities based on their socioeconomic origins, then we should suggest educational efforts designed to ameliorate these inequities, and establish the critical contention that our nation’s highest level of education is not conducted on a level socioeconomic playing field.”
Ultimately this is the kind of challenge that faces any modern university in city where traditional industries have declined and the city is developing a new identity. It is the opportunity for a university to go beyond providing a reflection of its locale and to become a catalyst for raising aspiration.