At the BERA Conference 2023 our symposium was the first to examine attainment disparities in racially minoritised university students. Four papers showed how interpersonal relationships, institutional structures and curricular matters are implicated in the formation and persistence of degree-award gaps. Methodologies drew from various disciplines and perspectives: qualitative and quantitative research methods; and critical and participatory approaches, including datasets gathered from the UK and US.
The degree-award gap – the difference in the award of a ‘good’ degree between racially minoritised students and their White peers – is a decades-old ‘ethnic penalty’ (Hasmath, 2011). Its effect is evident in disparities in degree classifications, employment patterns and pay. The gap also contributes to the ‘broken pipeline’ to postgraduate study and, ultimately, the underrepresentation of racially minoritised academics in higher education (HE) (Bhopal, 2018). This paper, presented as part of our BERA 2023 Conference symposium, drew on interviews with 29 university students to better understand the phenomenon. A Bourdieusian theoretical framing identified variables that constituted racialised student-participants’ ‘different’ university experiences. Those variables encapsulated three themes: the institutional/structural, the curricular and the relational. Accounts pointed towards a ‘racialised university experience’ that contributed to the formation and persistence of the gap in HE (Perumal, 2019).
The impostor phenomenon (IP) is characterised as a feeling of intellectual fraudulence (Clance & Imes, 1978). Conducted with 250 Black female university students in the UK and US, this study revealed that IP negatively correlates with belonging, which in turn, is strongly implicated in the degree-award gap. While attainment disparities are reducing, academic experiences and the wellbeing of racially minoritised students continue to be negatively affected (Canning et al., 2019). Our cross-cultural quantitative study found that belonging mediated the effect of IP on academic satisfaction and performance. The qualitative element, which featured the accounts of 10 Black women, revealed that IP and ‘unbelonging’ dominate UK Black students’ university experiences. Our research contributes to a deeper understanding of the effect of impostorism across ethnicities and cultures in HE.
