White Working Class Males in British Higher Education
Working in the forensic computing industry within a police department .
A number of focus group participants discussed their career goals with certainty as well , as illustrated through these quotes :
[ After already discussing the exact job he wanted ]: I specifically want to go into a defence company , which means … to get a position there you need a degree , specifically my degree is one of the better ones to get in there .
I knew what I wanted to do from I would say probably when we picked our options in secondary school . I knew what area I wanted to go in and then from then onwards I learned what I really wanted to do . So the University of Portsmouth had a really specialist course for me , computer games technology . Since I wanted to go into developing games I could actually take a course like that and not just computer science .
I wanted to be a part of the film or TV since about the age of ten , and originally I wanted to be an actor and then I started writing films and TV shows and shorts down , and then started filming them and realised I liked being behind the camera more than being in front of it , so I decided to do a media studies degree and hopefully get into directing afterwards .
I kind of require it [ a university degree ] … since I ’ m doing law and I ’ d like to be a barrister .
For prospective students who are certain about the career they want to hold after completing their degrees , they may be more interested in the specific ranking of their chosen course than in the overall university ranking . The employment prospects of alumni who have completed their chosen course may be one of the most important factors in their decision as well .
While recruitment strategies cannot be individualised for each and every prospective student , it is possible to develop three outreach strategies tailored to appeal to each section of the career certainty spectrum : one for those who are uncertain , one for those who are deciding , and one for those who are certain . Developing tailored strategies will enable outreach and recruitment professionals to address the specific concerns and questions students within each category are likely to have while they are deciding where to apply to university .
6.4 Exploring aspirations
In order to understand the higher education and career aspirations of white , working class men , it is important to consider the discussion in the first section of the post-entry findings . Since this population may be likely to view higher education as a risk that may or may not be worth taking , their plans for the future cannot be viewed through the same lens as their privileged peers for whom higher education is not a risk . This can be illuminated through quotes from focus group participants that highlight the enormity of the decision to apply to university and commit both to the burden of student debt and to three years of their life :
I didn ’ t want to go uni and spend all this money and then come out at the end and just not have a good job .
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The main thing I thought about was the percentage of people that get a job related to the degree , because … I don ’ t want to be spending all the money and just be getting the same job that I ’ d be able to get without actually having a degree .
Additionally , while the survey data indicates that this population may still be exploring career options after entering university , even the respondents who are unsure about what they want to do for work after graduation have made the decision to invest in higher education as a means to open doors for their future . Therefore , it could be argued that all of the participants in this research project are aspirational on some level .