While growing up in a small town in Kent, 20-year-old Annabelle never considered herself working-class. “Back home, because my mum has a mortgage and we didn’t live in a council house, I’m considered middle-class,” she says. But that all changed when she started studying at the University of Cambridge. “I don’t fit in in lots of ways,” she explains. “When my friends talk about art, or wines, or restaurants, I feel really isolated, because I haven’t grown up with that experience at all […] most of my friends are a lot wealthier than I am.”
Tension between poorer students and their wealthier counterparts is nothing new. Reflecting on his experience of taking the entrance examination at University of Cambridge in the early 1950s, writer Alan Bennett recalled: “I was appalled. They were loud, self-confident and all seemed to know one another, shouting down the table to prove it”. But while Bennett was writing about an incident from over 70 years ago, the divide between wealthy and working-class students persists to this day.
From “chav”-themed socials, to male freshers joking about having a “competition to fuck the poorest girl”, to Russell Group students shouting “my dad works for your dad” at the students of former polytechnics during varsity matches, stories of classism have continued to pour out of many major UK universities in recent years. Most recently, the Edinburgh Tab came under fire in October this year after commenting that the lack of Scottish students in one of their TikTok videos was “as God intended” (the university recently published guidance urging students not to be “snobs” towards their peers).
Of course, strides have been made in terms of widening access to higher education since Bennett’s day. In 1963, the Robbins Report found that only three per cent of working-class boys and one per cent of working-class girls would go on to full-time higher education, with the report’s author Lionel Robbins concluding that university places “should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment”. Today, efforts to make higher education more accessible have resulted in working-class students now accounting for around 20 per cent of undergraduates at the 24 Russell Group universities.
But the struggle is far from over. Private school alumni are still grossly overrepresented at many of the UK’s leading universities: only seven per cent of school-age children in the UK attend a private school, and yet the privately educated make up 31 per cent of all Oxford undergraduates, 36 per cent of St. Andrews undergraduates, and 39 per cent of Durham undergraduates. Even when there is a better balance of state-educated and privately-educated students, as many working-class students have come to learn, being admitted to a university is not the same as being truly accepted into it. “Cambridge has done a lot for widening participation, but it is simply not built for working-class students at all,” Annabelle says. “They think they can just throw money at you and that fixes everything, but it doesn’t.”
For less well-off students at these universities, being surrounded by so many privileged people can be a frustrating experience, with some describing the transition to university life as a “culture shock”. “In Freshers Week, I met these people who were talking about going skiing,” recalls Jack, a 20-year-old student at the University of York. “They asked where I went skiing. I just looked at them and was like, ‘I’ve never been skiing in my life’.”
A lot of people mock my accent, or repeat the things I say back to me, mimicking my accent
Research published by the Sutton Trust in 2022 also found that 47 per cent of university students have experienced being mocked or singled out for their accents in social settings. “When I was in first year, someone told me they couldn’t understand the way I was speaking,” Jack, who is originally from Durham, continues. “A lot of people mock my accent, or repeat the things I say back to me, mimicking my accent.” He adds that people often make assumptions about him based on the way he speaks. “Sometimes I’ll meet people on a night out, and they’ll ask if I go to York St John [a former polytechnic],” he explains. “When I say I do law at uni of, people are often shocked.”
It’s also possible that rising living costs are also exacerbating tensions, with wealthier students able to call on the Bank of Mum and Dad for financial help with everything from rent to ski trips, and students from poorer backgrounds forced to scrimp and scrape by. Research published this year found that 56 per cent of undergraduates were in paid employment while they were studying, a sharp rise from 45 per cent in 2022.
“Some people find it strange that I have a part-time job,” Jack explains. “I remember someone telling me they’d just quit their job, because their parents wanted them to focus on uni. But I was like, ‘how are you going to afford to be at uni without a job?’”. This chimes with Annabelle. “At Cambridge, there’s an expectation that you don’t work [in order to focus on studying]. The only holiday you’re really allowed to work is the summer holiday, which is completely insane,” she says.
It’s likely the divide between rich students and poor students is about to become even starker, given the news that tuition fees are set to increase to £9,535 a year from 2025 (while student loans are only paid off once graduates earn above a certain threshold, it’s likely the increase will deter students from disadvantaged backgrounds from applying to university). “Lots of people here don’t even have student loans,” Annabelle says. “One of my friends doesn’t even have a tuition fee loan or a maintenance loan.”
@93clubedinburgh Over the course of this week we have been sharing our State School Stories video series, with a focus this year on accent bias and classism. Each story explores the individual experiences of a state-educated student at the University of Edinburgh, giving them an opportunity share their thoughts and advice to other students ?️ Today, Lilian, a 1st Year Scots Law student, shares her experience with accent bias and why higher education is so important particularly for working class students ? If you’re interested in our campaign, please consider signing our campaign pledge (link in bio) to introduce classism and accent bias training for staff at the university ✍️ Please also share, like and comment to amplify Lilian’s story ⬇️ ? Many thanks to Andrew Perry for shooting and editing this video series ?️ Produced by Grace Mai Clark @the93percentclub @edunistudentsassociation #stateschoolproud #93percentclub #edinburgh #edinburghscotland #scotland #uni #university #universitylife #school #proud #like #unilife #impostersyndrome #celebrate #universityofedinburgh #edi #edinburghuniversity #accent #stateschool ♬ original sound – 93% Club Edinburgh
Dispiritingly, social class is often sidelined in discussions about equality and diversity. But some students, like Grace, a 21-year-old student at the University of Edinburgh, are hoping to start conversations about classism on campus. Grace is president of the University of Edinburgh’s branch of the 93% Club, a student-run charity established by working-class student Sophie Pender in 2016. Pender created the organisation while she was an undergraduate at the University of Bristol as a network for state-educated students who felt alienated by the numbers of privately educated students at the university. Today, the 93% Club – its name a nod to the fact that 93 per cent of people in the UK attended a state school – has now blossomed into a nationwide network with 51 branches at universities across the UK dedicated to supporting state-educated students.
Grace explains that the 93% Club do a lot of campaigning to raise awareness of the issues faced by working-class students at university. “We’ve been running a campaign since 2022 called ‘State School Pride’, which is just a series of short videos featuring different students sharing their experiences: the good, the bad, the in-between.” When the head of Widening Participation at Edinburgh saw the videos, she approached Grace to discuss next steps. “It stood out that so many students had shared negative experiences with staff, so I asked if we could try and develop some training for staff on classism and accent discrimination. That’s basically what we’ve been doing for the last 18 months now.”
“While we can’t guarantee that every student or every academic is going to be accepting of your presence here, the 93% Club is a really strong community of working-class, state-educated people here, and we’re here to support you,” Grace continues. “Classism is almost inevitable in an academic environment. But that doesn’t mean it’s something we should accept.”
