The dreams and promises of the university: Narratives of first-generation students in doctoral education
For those who are the first in their family to undertake higher education imaginings about what the university is, and what it may promise, can be of great importance. In the absence of access to university experience via these individuals' parents and sometimes wider social networks, these imaginings may underpin these students' aspirations, choices and plans as they seek a higher education. Moreover, these often hopeful, university imaginings can have particular resonance and stay with individuals even after they have spent considerable time in higher education. This study takes seriously the role of student imaginings and considers why first-generation students continue to invest in higher education through until doctoral study, especially in "the new times of contemporary academia" (Archer, 2008, p. 265) marked by neoliberalism and its concomitant high levels of individualism, competition and precariousness. This question is central to this research and underpins my efforts to trace the stories of first-generation students so as to gain insights into their higher education choices and pathways. In this study I drew on a variety of data collection methods including focus groups and interviews with 15 first-generation students studying for doctorates in Education. I also utilised autoethnographic and duo-ethnographic data and undertook narrative analysis of two cultural texts to understand the ways the university and the doctorate is imagined and understood by these students and in the wider cultural domain. In examining the student accounts gathered in this thesis I identify the role of a number of established social imaginaries including the Ivory tower, Liberal university, Hollywood pop culture university and Neoliberal university imaginaries in shaping these students' university understandings. These imaginaries, in different ways, position the university as a site of learning, opportunity and privilege. I also identify the significance of the mainstream discourses of meritocracy and social mobility. I argue that through taking up these discourses the first-generation individuals in this study were able to develop a sense of belonging and entitlement in the relatively elite space of doctoral education. In combination, these discourses and the identified university imaginaries hailed these students into place within doctoral education with, for many, the goal of becoming academics. However, I argue that these imaginaries also function as 'regimes of truth' (Foucault, 1980) that can disorient or mislead these students, encouraging them to pursue their hoped for university worlds that may not exist in the ways they imagine. An important contribution to knowledge is made though this study's identification of the reasoning and aspirations for first-generation students' pursuit of doctoral education. Its contribution also lies in its apprehension of the significance of students' university imaginings and the key discursive formations that circulate around and through them.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations