The overlooked dimension: Social class and its absence in higher education equality and diversity policies

This article examines the critical exclusion of social class from UK higher education EDI policies. Drawing on Bourdieusian analyses of university stratification and evidence of persistent under-representation of working-class students and academics in elite institutions, it demonstrates that EDI frameworks excluding class function as elite class politics. Universities become more diverse in race and gender but less diverse in class. The article critically assesses both the potential and perverse incentives of class-based EDI, addressing the central contradiction between promoting social mobility whilst documenting its psychological costs for working-class individuals. It concludes with recommendations for institutional policy change whilst maintaining critical awareness that EDI interventions constitute harm reduction rather than structural transformation.