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If you're not shopping in the right places or wearing the right clothes it can be hard to fit in at an elite university. Photograph: Felix Clay
If you're not shopping in the right places or wearing the right clothes it can be hard to fit in at an elite university. Photograph: Felix Clay

Working-class students: 'there's a constant feeling you don't belong'

This article is more than 9 years old
Universities need to do more to make working-class students feel welcome at elite universities, writes a student blogger

"Won't you find the Russell Group environment different and difficult?" people asked when I accepted a place at the University of York.

None of my family had attended a Russell Group university: my sister was the first to go to university at all. Because of this, I began to wonder whether I was suitable for a top-ranking institution. Would I fit in among wealthy and well-spoken peers?

According to a report published by the Sutton Trust, working-class children are shunning top universities.

John Jerrim of the Institute for Education in London, says: "There are significant numbers of working-class children who, even though they have the academic ability to attend, choose to enter a non-selective institution instead."

Government adviser Peter Brant thinks working-class students need to become more "middle class" to fit in. He said we need help to change the way we eat, dress and conduct personal relationships to get ahead in life.

I don't agree with his comments, but it's true that at redbrick universities there is a divide between students from working-class backgrounds and the rest of the student body.

It starts at Freshers' Week. For most students it's a great time, but I spent most of it worrying about what I was wearing and whether I fitted in.

One night I was ushered out of a student club and told to put something different on because the clothing I was wearing was "unacceptable". I was wearing a plain T-shirt, jeans and trainers: it wasn't fancy, but it wasn't dirty or offensive.

Perhaps it wasn't so much the style of clothes I was wearing but the fact that they weren't from the right shops.

Natalie James, a third year history student at University College London, says she was told by other students at university that it was "degrading" to shop in Primark. "I was completely outraged", she says. "But it's very difficult to speak up against that sort of thing."

It wasn't just what I was wearing that made me feel different. My accent took many students by surprise because I think people expect to hear received pronunciation at university.

Third-year philosophy student Bhavisha Vekhria remembers a time in her music class at university when they were listening to trap music – the singers had traditionally working-class sounding voices. "The other students were laughing and making jokes about their voices," she says.

It's not sweeping discrimination at work in top universities, but a series of small experiences that build up. It's a contemptuous look from someone who doesn't understand that for some people Primark is really all they can afford.

It's a pitying glance after explaining you don't have the money to go out again this week. It's having to repeat yourself three times to your flatmates who have never heard broad vowels before. It adds up to this constant feeling that you just don't belong.

Coming to a Russell Group university as a working-class student was as big a culture shock as coming from another country. There are pressures to adjust to radically different standards. It can be overwhelming when you're already making a difficult transition from school to university.

Although there is support for working-class students, it is failing to change people's attitudes. Making sure the least well off can access top universities and feel comfortable when they're there should be a priority for people who believe that it doesn't matter where you come from, but where you're going.

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