Conference Program

Existing research highlights how privileged groups emphasise the role of talent and effort as explanations for individual success in meritocratic selection (e.g., Brown et al., 2016; Gogescu, 2025; Warikoo and Fuhr, 2014). Studies suggest that the ways elites understand inequality and success are influenced by the channels or characteristics of education institutions through which elite recruitment predominantly occurs (e.g. Friedman et al., 2024; Gogescu, 2025; Warikoo, 2018). However, the literature has largely focused on justifications for selection processes within specific institutions and elite entry routes, paying less attention to how the “winners” of these systems conceptualise the distribution of educational opportunities as a whole and understand the opportunities available to others, as Gogescu (2025) notes.

This ongoing study takes a distinctive approach by exploring how undergraduate students at a highly prestigious UK university perceive the causes and consequences of the distribution of educational opportunities, as well as the policies they are willing to support. Using interviews and an interactive task with movable components, participants visualise their perceptions of how educational opportunities are currently distributed and how they believe they should be distributed across different levels of the higher education system. This task enables an in-depth examination of inequality as unequal resource distribution, rendering abstract notions of opportunity distribution more tangible (Summers et al., 2022).

Preliminary findings, available for the conference, will illuminate how students' socio-economic backgrounds and educational experiences shape their views. It will offer insights into perceptions of fairness and the distribution of opportunities in higher education from the top.