Extra-credential experiences and social closure: working-class students at university

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra-credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra-curricular and 'enriching' educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working-class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working-class students' relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra-credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some.