With a little help from my family and friends: social class and contextual variations in the role of personal networks in students’ higher education plans

AbstractThis article analyses the influence of family and friends on students’ higher education plans. Using a Bourdieusian framework, it examines social class and contextual influences on both the structure of students’ networks and the content of interactions within them. These are shown to be dependent on the dispositions and capitals of both the students and the members of those networks. Relying on data from a questionnaire circulated among 1,645 French lycée students, the article shows the existence of significant social class differences in the frequency and nature of students’ interactions about higher education with various types of family members and friends. It also highlights that these differences are subject to contextual variations, with students from the same social background interacting differently with their personal networks (see Table 4) about their higher education plans depending on the school they attend and the track in which they are enrolled.Keywords: Higher education planspersonal networkssocial capitalsocial classFrance Disclosure statementAll human subjects gave their informed consent prior to their participation in the research, and we protect the confidentiality of participants and institutions by excluding any identifying information. We also report no conflict of interest.Notes1 This study is part of a broader research project exploring how networks, institutions and markets influence the ways in which students from different social classes engage with HE (van Zanten Citation2019).2 This platform, now called Parcoursup, underwent significant changes in 2018 after our study. A major difference is that students now no longer rank their choices (Frouillou et al. Citation2019).3 At the most aggregated level, the INSEE Professions and socioprofessional categories nomenclature (whose initial designers both contributed to Bourdieu’s training in statistics and were later influenced by his sociological teaching (Seibel Citation2004)) distinguishes six main categories among the active population: 1-Farmers (Agriculteurs exploitants); 2-Craft workers, retailers and company directors (Artisans, commerçants et chefs d’entreprise); 3- Executives and members of intellectual high-status professions (Cadres et professions intellectuelles supérieures); 4-Intermediate occupations (Professions intermédiaires); 5-Employees (Employés); 6-Blue-collar workers (Ouvriers). It is common in the French sociological literature to equate category 3 with the upper class, 1, 2 and 4 with the middle class, and 5 and 6 with the lower class.4 For this item, we only consider students who stated they had at least one brother or sister.5 The way the survey question was framed means we cannot distinguish which topics students discussed with whom but can only examine which topics received the most attention in interactions with members of their personal network in general.6 Because the vast majority of MC and UC students have two French parents (respectively, 78% and 92%), we can only explore differences according to immigrant background in the case of LC students. We compare students with two French parents, with one French parent and with two parents born abroad.7 We also examined variations according to schools’ administrative status (state/private) but these variations were less significant as our sample only allows us to compare UC students in the two ‘privileged’ state and private establishments and, for this reason but also for lack of space, we do not present them here.8 Due to the smaller sample of MC students in professional tracks, we consider them together with those in technological tracks.9 A reform of the academic lycée track in 2018 abolished these subtracks. Students in this track now follow a common core curriculum together with three optional subjects in Year 12 and two in Year 13 (Pin and van Zanten Citation2021).10 Presently, French students are allocated to state lycées through an algorithm taking into account their choices and prioritising them according to place of residence, which remains the most important criterion, but also grades and scholarship status. Some prestigious state lycées such as the one in our sample managed until recently to use specific admission procedures, similarly to private lycées.11 This term, which refers to the accumulation of advantages by high status individuals, was coined by the sociologists Merton (Citation1968) and was inspired by the Parable of the Talents in the biblical Gospel of Matthew.