Social mobility, the very idea

Martin McQuillan

‘Social mobility’ is complicated. The phrase seems to have entered the UK political lexicon, along with ‘fairness’, as a label for an off-the-shelf policy fix in the years before the 2010 election. But given that social mobility is only one possible side effect of a university education rather than its primary purpose, we are entitled to wonder how this tail came to wag the dog.

Social mobility is about a person moving from one social class into another either by dint of education or as a consequence of wealth. It does nothing to challenge or correct the inequities that create social divisions in the first place. It is essentially about augmenting the present system with new blood without affecting the status quo. Much of the implicit argument around tuition fees and access to universities has been based on this unacknowledged assumption. ‘Access’ in these terms is about saving children from their social origins by offering them the chance to be ‘like us’, attend a ‘good university’ and to join the productive middle classes. ‘Fairness’ in this context means everyone’s inalienable right to reaffirm inequality.