BIAS IN BUSINESS EDUCATION
even when those wealthier graduates have achieved lower grades. To overcome the perception that going to university does not benefit working-class students fairly, business schools must improve their employability prospects. Supporting positive transitions Business schools need to connect with employers more actively on behalf of their students to improve the employability prospects of their graduates. These connections should help to replicate the employability mechanisms and social networks to which wealthy graduates already have abundant access. In this way, the playing field may be effectively levelled for all graduates and, consequently, business schools may end up attracting more applicants from working‑class backgrounds. Some of the mechanisms by which working-class graduates were able to transition from university to more positive outcomes were identified in Bentley’s thesis. These include engaging in meaningful paid work, or volunteering, while at university; experiencing supportive social relationships; being able to envisage a secure future post-graduation; and having their cultural and experiential capital valued both at work and home. By supporting this pride in the social origins of working-class students, in which their experiential capital is valued rather than rejected, business schools may contribute towards a more socially just education system. Business schools need to support the successful transition of their working-class students following graduation by encouraging them to maintain links with their hometowns and culture. Through these mechanisms, we can achieve not only a sense of pride in their working-class origins, but also a substitute mechanism for the parental ‘leg up’ provided by wealthy parents. Working-class graduates might not be able to choose their family upbringing, but they can choose to stay connected to their roots.
the scenarios provided as examples in schools’ teaching practices. Disadvantages & disincentives In practice, universities may be excluding students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from their intakes. This is because they are concerned about their rankings, which can be negatively impacted by including working-class students, since such students are more likely to attain lower grades. Therefore, some universities are effectively working against economically disadvantaged students, since they are preferentially selecting students from wealthier families and raising the bar out of reach for the rest. The Sutton Trust’s 2019 report recommends that highly selective universities with fewer working-class students should reduce their entry grades. This should be done in recognition of the way that applicants from economically disadvantaged backgrounds experience substantially differing circumstances. Compared with students from wealthier backgrounds, working-class graduates also have very different experiences on their return to their home environment. In her 2020 doctoral thesis, Jackie Goes Home , Laura Jayne Bentley examines how leaving university is both a ‘classed’ and ‘gendered’ process. She argues that working-class graduates cannot exploit their education in the same way that wealthy graduates do and explains that when economically disadvantaged graduates return home, they find that their skills and experiences do not match their needs. Returning graduates also discover that they can’t apply learning to their lives in the same way that wealthier graduates can. Working-class graduates lack the social connections of their wealthier peers, leading to disempowerment and exclusion from the graduate job market, even with a good education behind them, as MIT Sloan’s Stansbury highlighted in the aforementioned FT interview. To overcome this, Bentley’s doctoral thesis recommended that universities should ensure working-class students retain their original connections so they can re‑root after they graduate. It also observed that those graduates who sought university to escape their working-class backgrounds fared worse, since they effectively lost valuable contacts by cutting themselves off. This scenario may explain why working-class graduates with good grades continue to fare worse in the job market than wealthier ones,
Richard Galletly i s a senior lecturer at The University of Law Business School, where he teaches leadership and human resource management. He holds a professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) from the University of Liverpool and an MBA from Birmingham City University
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Business Impact • ISSUE 1 • 2025
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