slides accompanying the presentation of Melanie Walker at the University of Johannesburg on 26 May 2016, on Aspirations in Higher Education

1. THEORISING ASPIRATIONS AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Melanie Walker
University of Johannesburg, 26 May 2016

2. Justice and equality
Inequality in/through education is unfair. It is a denial of the possibility for everybody’s human capabilities to
develop:
• Educational inequalities reduce our capabilities to function as human beings, as well as our resources to act
and participate in this world.
• We should pay attention to in/equality of capability in higher education across dimesnions of ‘resource
inequality’’ (unequal resources to at) and ‘existential inequality’ (unequal personhood) (Therborn 2013).
• We can lay these dimensions across an axis of accessing, experiencing, achieving, and aspiring capabilities,
and a financial/resource axis.
Women’s narratives
• interweaving of well-being, aspirational pathways, agency actions, conversion factors
• intersectionality
• critical agency
• gender structures
Rethinking first round data capabilities of: 1) safety and bodily integrity, 2) dignity and respect, 3) voice, 4)
knowledge and higher education.

3. Resources/income/
financial axis intersecting with
multi-dimensional capabilities axis
for aspirations achievements

4. (Valued)
Wellbeing
freedoms,
including
aspirations
Functionings
Social, including
HE, conversion
Factors:
Enable/
Constrain:
Public funding
HE processes
Diversity
Subject field
Individual
conversion
factors enable/
constrain
Income
Race, gender,
class
Quality of
schooling
Family
endowments
gender equality: more/less
Aspirations & Agency

5. Capabilities &functionings (well-being) and
agency freedoms
• Well-being: freedoms to chose to be and to do in all the plural ways
the person has reason to value
• Agency: being able to act towards valued goals and commitments;
well-being depends also on how a person achieved her functionings
and whether she was active in the process of achieving these
functionings or not (who decided?).

6. Aspirations
• Appadurai (2004); aspirations as forward looking; aspirations are not
simply individually formed but always culturally and socially
embedded, enabled and constrained through social relations ‘in the
thick of life’; aspirations and voice = agency; aspirations are thinner
under conditions of poverty - ‘capacitation’
• Ray (2003) ‘cognitive neighbourhood’ and ‘aspirations window/gap’ –
similarity, information, ‘statistical calculations’
• Conradie and Robeyns (2013): aspirations as capabilities selecting and
agency unlocking

7. Achieved
aspirations; new
aspirations
formed
Conversion
factors
agency
capability to
aspire

8. Table 1: Biographical data (with pseudonyms)
Name Race/
Ethnicity
School Mother’s occupation Housing/
Neighbour
Hood
University field of
study
Funding FG Lives on/
off campus
Buhle Black Xhosa Model C,
English
Hons in Education and Theology
degree.
Rural Agriculture Parents No On
Nadia White
Afrikaans
Model C,
dual
Pre-school teacher Town Theology Parents No On
Relebohile Black Sotho Model C,
English
Hons degree in education; principal Town Corporate
Marketing and
Comm
Parents No Off -
parents
Sarah White
Afrikaans
Model C,
English
Teaching, counselling, studying
towards psychology hons degree
Town Psychology Bursaries (Govt
then NRF and
merit)
No On
Thandi Pedi/
Tswana
Private,
catholic
Accountant; step-mother: teacher Township Botany Bursaries No On
Jessica White
Afrikaans
Model C,
Afrikaans
MSc Agriculture – housewife. Rural (farm) Political science Parents No On
Dineo Black Sotho/
Tswana
Township Grade 1/2 education, works as
domestic worker
Township Education Govt bursary Yes Off
Khetiwe Black
Swati/Zulu
Township
Catholic from
grade 10
Mother: Gr 8 education, domestic
worker
Township Psychology Financial aid,
applies for loans
and bursaries
Yes On and off
Thumi Black Xhosa Township Gr 10, works as cleaner Township Business
management
Financial aid –
applying for
bursaries
Yes Off

9. Table 2: Conversion factors
Name Schooling quality Higher education processes, Funding Access to on campus
activities
Buhle good Positive. Agriculture PG and food security. Had
planned to do theology after agriculture but
chose PG study in food security, aspiration to
work with the UN, h also working with young
unemployed people teaching them framing.
Very gender aware because of her sexuality
and how it is received by her family.
Parents Yes, leadership involvement
Nadia good Positive for her theology degree (although had
wanted to study drama) and in future plans to
do missionary work in some form, aspirations
shaped strongly by her religious faith
Parents Yes but not much involved
Relebohile good Positive, doing her honours, wants to do
masters in cape Town
Parents No, lives with parents. Wants
to be independent of parents
Sarah good Positive but initially unclear, did journalism then
psychology honours, planning to do masters in
counselling psychology.
Bursaries Yes but not much involvement

10. Table 2: Key Conversion factors cont.
Thandi good Positive, changed from microbiology to botany
and future PhD; gender aware regarding limits
placed on women scientists but rejects this and
feels university encourages her.
Bursaries Yes but not much involvement
Jessica good Positive for her politics degree but experience of
sexual harassment by lecturer; wants to make a
difference for women
Parents Yes, leadership involvement
Dineo Poor, could not do
medicine so choose
teaching but teachers
not supportive of this
choice
Positive for teacher education and wants to do
PG study in zoology and PhD and lecture one
day
Govt bursary No
Khetiwe Poor
(3 years at good
school). Lack of info re
choices
Positive for degree but has yet to complete BA in
psychology
Financial aid, applies
for loans and bursaries,
struggles
No
Thumi Poor, lacked info re HE,
underprepared when
she started
Positive for degree, thinking about doing PhD
(but still wants to be a CA one day)
Financial aid – applying
for bursaries, struggles
but helped by Dept.
No

11. capabilities
agency
aspirations
Strengthened
capabilities
and agency
Aspirations
‘sliding
forward’

12. Experiencing higher education
• Getting an education, getting a life, getting established, starting your
career and just being independent... you can stand up for yourself
now.…The more you are educated the more liberated your mind is
and you see things in a different way….and you realise, my goodness,
there's still more that I can achieve….. I think back, especially with my
cousins… especially when you've grown up in the township and
you've lived there, you were born there and you've lived there for so
long….You're thinking around within that box, and you don't know it.
(Thandi, February 2015)

13. Clustering six creative capability dimensions
• From earlier data rounds: four capability dimensions (i) safety and bodily
integrity, ii) dignity and respect, iii) voice, and iv) knowledge and
education).
• Now:
1. affiliations with others and concern for others, including dignity, respect
and recognition’[dignity and respect ]
2. resilience [added]
3. aspiring to a better future [added]
4. Bodily safety and bodily integrity (including gender awareness)
5. voice
6. knowledge and [higher] education

14. Name HE
Qualif &
knowledge
Voice Affiliation Aspirations Resilience Bodily safety Gender
aware-
ness (incl.
BI)
Buhle 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Jessica 5 5 5 5 5 5 3
Relebohile 5 5 4 5 5 5 2
Nadia 4 2 3 3 2 5 1
Sarah 5 4 5 5 3 5 2
Thandi 5 5 4 5 4 5 3
Khetiwe 5 3 5 5 5 5 1
Thumi 5 4 5 5 5 5 3
Dineo 5 3 5 5 5 5 1

15. To conclude…..
• As a valued capability in itself (strongly valued by women), higher
education has the potential to reduce the impact of disadvantages to
build individual capability sets, strengthen agency and empower
women students This in turn, shapes and reshapes aspirational
pathways towards what people have reason to value, thereby
contributing not constricting well-being.
• Universities need to pay [more] attention to gendered cultures and
norms which are shaping identities perhaps in subtle and not well–
recognised ways but nonetheless laying down or reinforcing patterns
of identity and accommodation, which may not serve women well in
the future.