Understanding what life is like for those studying and working within universities has been of increased interest to higher education research, policy and practice over the past 15 years. Recently, a heightened concern around experiences for the higher education workforce has been raised through a series of University and College Union (UCU) reports and strike action, and highlighted by BERA’s State of the Discipline initiative (UCU 2021; BERA 2023). As part of these phenomena, there has been an increased emphasis on the workloads, working conditions and a lack of representation and diversity in the higher education (HEI) workforce (Morris et al., 2023; Belluigi et al., 2023).
This has been emphasised by the reporting of racism, classism and the difficulties of managing an academic career alongside high workloads and a multitude of exterior pressures, such as caring responsibilities (Morris et al., 2023; Universities UK, 2020). Research has sought to understand the lives of people from different backgrounds as they enter universities; students from working-class backgrounds have featured heavily in academic discourses, and recent reflections by Bhopal and Myers have begun to understand the intersectionality between ethnicity and social class background (Bhopal & Myers, 2023).
What has been lost so far in this myriad of brilliant research is the limitation that the experience of working and studying in universities in the UK is restricted to academics and students. Professional services staff are understood by their function, having absent voices within UK academic research (Whitchurch, 2010). Where their experiences are counted, they relate solely to professional identity (Caldwell, 2022). At BERA Conference 2023 I will present findings from my thesis research. It seeks to understand some of the experiences of working-class professional services staff in UK universities (explicitly, Russell Group). It argues that we cannot understand how culture, norms, behaviours and practices are experienced if we fail to include this key area of the workforce.
The study finds that the dislocation between habitus and field which exists between working-class professional services staff and some Russell Group institutions creates an environment where staff are often subjected to poor behaviour from academics and face being ostracised and left out of the ‘game’. In these examples, participants spoke about not being able to interact with others due to the deferential language patterns used in academia, or the references made to things like classical antiquity, opera or fine art. This resulted in some participants feeling underappreciated and undervalued. Some in the study also reported feeling a sense of feeling ‘in between’ – that is, not fully integrated into their occupational setting – while simultaneously being ‘left out’ from life in their home environments. Often, on their career journeys, staff reported instances of microaggressions; classist, antagonistic behaviour; and being misjudged due to their accent, language or mannerisms.
