Family Patterns of Social Mobility through Higher Education in England in the 1930s

The paper examines the role of higher education in producing social mobility in England in the 1930s. The data result from large-scale surveys of graduates of a number of non-Oxbridge universities and university colleges in those years, chosen to get a mix of circumstances. A higher proportion of women than men appeared to come from middle class backgrounds, partly because of the exclusion of Oxbridge. Men appeared to have stronger career aspirations than women, targeting professional careers partly as an escape from the conditions of the 1930s Depression. Yet most women saw their university education as linked to a need to earn a living, though teaching was the main prospect. The view of certain sociologists that fathers supported sons and mothers supported daughters has some substance, but mothers were also important support for sons, especially from lower classes. Upward social mobility occurred for virtually all men, but the pay-off to women from university education was more ambiguous, and often rested on the university as a place for meeting their spouse. Probably the main effect for women was a 'snowballing' of encouragement to their offspring to attend university, through successive generations of women.