Ailenin Sosyo-Ekonomik Düzeyi ile Yüksek Öğretime Giriş Arasındaki İlişki: Sudan-Hartum Üniversitesi Örneği

Abstract

This study is on the nature of the relationship between access to higher education and the socio-economic level or social class of position the family. This relationship is examined through a case study conducted in Khartoum University in the Republic of Sudan. The main question of the research is what kind of a causal relationship exists between the class origins of students and the departments they are enrolled in, and how this relationship is shaped in interaction with educational policies, other social factors capable of producing social exclusion and deprivation, and the individual qualifications. The study has been designed as a qualitative one, by considering theories of class and of the claims of theories explaining the relationship between class origins and educational attainment. Empirical data of the study have been collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 40 students chosen from among nearly 27,000 undergraduates enrolled with Khartoum University as of 2017-18 academic year. The interviewees have been accessed by snowball sampling technique after classifying them into five strata, based on the range of their admission scores; and 6 to 10 students have been interviewed from each one of these strata. The research data have been analysed qualitatively by utilizing both within-stratum and inter-strata (that is within-case and between-case) comparisons, revealing how the factors that are the expressions of social class position and social exclusion also affect access to certain academic departments which in turn form the occupational basis of certain class positions. The purpose of this analysis is to assess how class origins and the patterns of social exclusion aid in the reproduction and continuation of the original class positions and how the causal mechanisms of this phenomenon operate. The research findings show that the degree of actual or potential performance/success of individuals is related to where, when and how their biography intersect a multitude of structural inequalities, and the advantages and disadvantages that express these inequalities. It is observed that the upper and lower-upper classes are in an advantageous position concerning the continuation of their class positions through educational mobility. This is achieved by ensuring a better education for their children from an early age, thereby converting their social, economic and cultural capital into the qualifications or merit, namely admission scores, necessary to be admitted into "prestigious faculties". Where these scores are not enough they achieve the same through special admission, that is to say by paying a special tuition fee to compensate for an inadequate admission score. Keywords: Social Class, Gender, Educational Achievement, Social Exclusion, Rural, Urban, University of Khartoum, Higher Education