Middle-Class ‘Chavs’ from Working-Class Areas? Socialisation, Habitus and Perspectives of Research and Higher Education among Public Relations and Journalism Students in England

Purpose
The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast about higher education and research among public relations and journalism students from the middle-class and working-class origin. The paper applied Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to analyse prejudices against working-class, explores whether working-class students express an anti-education view and whether the appreciation of education (and research in particular) is a predominantly middle-class attitude.

Design/methodology/approach
Focus groups and an online questionnaire were used to obtain views of students at new university in Northern England. Triple coding (open, axial, selective) was used and the data was then analysed and presented using thematic analysis.

Findings
Findings show that early socialisation about education as well as students’ type of neighbourhoods (habitus) influence studies views of higher education and research in particular. Whilst the findings show some similarity with views in the literature of middle-class being more inclined to value education, these findings show that this is true only for those who grow up in middle-class areas whereas middle-class students who grew up in working-class area show working-class attitudes of education. Equally, working-class students who grew up in middle-class areas show what is usually perceived as a middle-class view of education. Both groups of students show a tendency towards embracing a consumerist view of higher education.

Originality
There is a dearth of class-based research in higher education. Moreover, in the broad field of communication there is also little research globally analysing the impact of class-based differences on attitudes about approaches to research and theory-informed learning in higher education.