Cultural Capital and Educational Inequality: A Study of Academic Achievement and Persistence among Higher Education Students
This is a qualitative research study on the influence of cultural capital on the experience of students and their education results in higher education. Through the Bourdieu theory of cultural capital, habitus, and field, the study examines the way students with varying socioeconomic statuses act to mobilize embodied, objectified and institutionalized forms of capital in universities. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 undergraduate students, with different socioeconomic and first-generation backgrounds. Thematic analysis showed that cultural capital has significant impacts on academic confidence, classroom involvement, institutional orientation, and sense of belonging. Students with high socioeconomic status exhibited a greater adherence to the mainstream academic standards, and the first-generation and low-SES students indicated that they experienced difficulties in the beginning but had developed coping strategies throughout their lives. The results bring out the reproductive character of higher education as well as its reorganizational possibilities. The research paper highlights the importance of having inclusive institutional practices in order to minimize the inequalities in academic achievement and persistence.
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Cultural Capital, Education Inequality, Academic Achievement, Persistence, Higher Education
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(1) Shafquat Ali
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Sociology & Gender Studies, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan.
(2) Muhammad Tahir
Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Karakorum University Diamer Campus, Chilas, Gilgit- Baltistan, Pakistan.
(3) Shazib Iqbal
M.Sc. Graduated, Department of sociology and Criminology, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan.
