D.06. Is University Paying Off? Upwardly Mobile Students and the Meaning of Meritocratic Striving

In diverse national contexts, higher education has been promoted as an engine for social mobility. This has been part of a meritocratic model in which the idea of struggling to climb the social ladder has become an influential cultural trope (Littler, 2017). The values associated with this meritocratic striving (Sandel, 2021) have been appealing to many students, particularly those from lower social backgrounds. However, it seems that higher education is not paying off, and the promise of social mobility is not only broken, but may also be experienced as an unfulfillable promise (Mijs, 2016). Building on these observations, this panel invites authors from different countries to discuss the many tensions arising from the limits of meritocracy that upwardly mobile students may confront. Among the key questions guiding this panel are: how do students experience the promise of meritocracy? What are the implications of these struggles for their everyday lives? What expectation do they have for the future? How do students navigate the tensions between their aspirations and the structural conditions shaping their educational pathways? Drawing on these questions, this panel encourages authors to emphasise not only constraints and barriers, but also the critical, agentic, collective and reflexive capacities and practices that upwardly mobile students develop to move through university. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are welcome that explore how higher education can simultaneously reproduce social inequalities and open pathways for empowerment, and how it may serve as a lever for countering educational injustice.