Conference Program

Meritocracy is the belief that all individuals are responsible for and capable of activating their merit through hard work, enabling them to succeed in life (Littler, 2017). Several studies have documented how meritocratic beliefs are widely held in contemporary higher education, including the study of assumptions about who deserves to participate in and succeed in higher education (or in the most prestigious institutions) (Poulsen, 2026; Varriale and Franceschelli, 2025; Jin and Ball, 2019; Warikoo, 2018), or how far the values of excellence, prestige and success should drive higher education systems (Reeves and Friedman, 2024; Sandel, 2020). Less academic attention has been paid to how meritocratic beliefs are lived, experienced and interpreted by individuals during their academic journeys.

In this paper, I draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and doxa to examine how undergraduate students from different social-class backgrounds at an elite university in England experienced and made meaning of the dominant meritocratic doxa. The paper relies on primary data collected through an online questionnaire (n=450) and semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews (n=25) with working- and middle-class undergraduate students from diverse academic disciplines at one Russell-Group university in England. The paper presents partial findings from an ongoing mixed-methods comparative case study conducted at two universities in England aimed at exploring how meritocratic beliefs are reproduced at elite and non-elite universities.

By focusing particularly on the concept of doxa (Bourdieu, 1999, 2000) (the set of beliefs and assumptions understood as natural or ‘taken-for-granted’), the paper uncovers the complex reflective and affective processes through which meritocratic experiences are interpreted. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates about how meritocratic beliefs are socially perpetuated and the prominent roles that elite and educational fields play in this process.