Being working class in the academy

Maybe stopping using pretentious phrases like 'the academy' would be a start too!

1. According to these pictures there are no brown skinned people who are working class. That's a relief, they have enough to deal with with racism in the academy never mind class prejudice. 2. Working class member of my family. First, MA with distinction. Offered PhD Scholarship. Chose a University Professional Support Staff Career instead. Under 30, she has a good salary, a permanent post, and is pensioned - she could have joined USS, but chose the better local government LPFA scheme instead. To quote here: 'you'd have to be stupid to do a PhD'. Which given that you have to be clever to do a PhD, is a bit of a problem. For the academy.

"My approach helps them to realise that the issues of transitioning into a new class culture are not a reflection on their individual capacity to achieve through higher education. This, in turn, facilitates their academic adjustment." I have 2 questions about "academic adjustment" - for whose benefit? and at whose expense?

'Class', just like 'ethnicity' and 'gender', are divisive constructs often used as a crutch where none is needed. If you are good - and academia needs the brilliant minds - you will thrive... unless you hold yourself back by obsessing on artificial classifications that can mask the fact that you are a bright person, or claiming some kind of entitlement because you see yourself as disadvantaged.

Interesting in the intro that you conflate 'working-class' and 'poor'; maybe truer now than when this WC academic was young, but working class men at any rate could be then, and some still are now, better paid than many academics.

You are right. Class seems to have become forgotten in the identity politics as you mentioned. What would Karl say? :) Academia is elitist and classist the higher you go up in the career ladder, no matter which country, so is Politics, etc. It pervades society. It never went anywhere.

Drop the whining and get on with it. I started out in life with a tin bath on the back wall of a terraced house, outdoor plumbing and a refugee parent who could not read or write. A selective high school set me off on a path to good university and professional qualifications and, over time, hard work produced millions. I know you do not wish to read that grammar schools were good for working class kids, but they were. In fact, they were so good, that middle class parents whose kids were failing to get in pushed to close them. Over the years, I have taught many Hooray Henry types, including a viscount, at good universities like Edinburgh (looking round the tutorial, I asked "Tim is it?" Tim anxiously nodded, clearly grateful for my intervention) and generally find the upper classes to be terrified of those of us who prospered through meritocracy. They can't place you. Someone may write, "Yes, we can." No they can't.

Oh yes they can TonyTiger ... in fact they just did.