ABSTRACT
This compelling and stimulating book explores the gendered social history of students in modern Britain.
From the privileged youth of Brideshead Revisited, to the scruffs at 'Scumbag University' in The Young Ones, representations of the university undergraduate have been decidedly male. But since the 1970s the proportion of women students in universities in the UK has continued to rise so that female undergraduates now outnumber their male counterparts.
Drawing upon wide-ranging original research including documentary and archival sources, newsfilm, press coverage of student life and life histories of men and women who graduated before the Second World War, this text provides rich insights into changes in student identity and experience over the past century.
The book examines :
- men's and women's differing expectations of higher education
- the sacrifices that families made to send young people to college
- the effect of equality legislation
- demography
- changing patterns of marriage and the impact of the 'sexual revolution' on female students
- the cultural life of students and the role that gender has played in shaping them.
For students of gender studies, cultural studies and history, this book will have meaningful impact on their degree course studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|117 pages
Access and ambitions
chapter Chapter One|31 pages
Going to university in England between the wars: Access, funding and social class
chapter Chapter Two|26 pages
Men and women in higher education in the 1930s: Family expectations, gendered outcomes
chapter Chapter Three|19 pages
Driving ambitions: Women in pursuit of a medical education, 1890–1939
chapter Chapter Four|18 pages
Wasted investments and blocked ambitions?: Women graduates in the postwar world
chapter Chapter Five|21 pages
Gaining places: The rising proportion of women students in universities after 1970
part II|85 pages
Coeducation and culture