Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education

Diane Reay, Miriam E. David, and Stephen Ball. Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2005. 180 pp. Paper: $29.95. ISBN: 1-8585-6330-5.

In the 1960s, higher education in the United Kingdom shifted from a previously elite system to a system of mass public education. Participation and access to colleges and universities widened, providing students with numerous choices in the types and locations of institutions of higher education to attend. In Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race, and Gender in Higher Education, Diane Reay, Miriam David, and Stephen Ball assert that the rhetoric of equity and fairness accompanying this increased access in the United Kingdom has hidden "a deepening of education and social stratification" (p. vii).

The expansion of higher education has generated social inequities exemplified in the types of institutions that students from different social classes choose to attend. The aim of this book is to problematize the long-standing notion that students choose college using a rational choice theory model and to draw attention to how social justice and equity are factors in college choice.

Chapters 1 and 2 lay the foundation for this empirical study. Chapter 1 describes the U.K. trends of student enrollment disaggregated by race, gender, age, and social class and details the study sample, including the students and the institutions, in the analysis. The authors employ qualitative methods, emphasizing student and parent narratives to illustrate how an individual student's knowledge and use of resources during the college choice process is heavily based on social class.

Chapter 2 presents Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social and cultural capital, paying particular attention to the concepts of habitus and field. The authors define habitus as a conceptual tool that combines individual choice,...