I’ve Found Friends’: Experiences of Persistence and Shared Academic Identities in Friendship Formation for Working-Class University Students

Abstract

Friends are critical for students’ academic and social integration at university. However, socio-economic disparities in the likelihood of successful friendship formation have been highlighted with a number of barriers to ‘making friends’ for working-class students identified, with attendant concerns about the impact of this on their retention and progression. Yet, the ways in which working-class students may successfully make friends at university through circumventing barriers is under-researched. This chapter offers a contribution to this gap through semi-structured interviews with 14 second and third year working-class students from three UK institutions. The participants reflected upon what had helped and hindered friendship formation. Eleven of the 14 participants had at least one friend and nine of these participants had been open to making friends when they started university. The thematic analysis highlighted: persistence, proximity to the university and shared academic identities supported forming friendships. The participants believed participating in social activities was a key mechanism for making friends but that was largely perceived to be inaccessible. Future studies should explore how degree programme design can aid in making friends for students unable to access wider university experiences.

1. Introduction

Friendship is defined for the purposes of this chapter as ‘a chosen relationship, albeit usually forged with people of our own gender and social status’ [1]. Student friendships have received limited attention in the higher education literature [2]. Friendships are important for our happiness and wellbeing and reflect aspects of our identity [3]. However, we are likely to form friendships with those who are similar to us which may perpetuate wider societal inequities [3, 4]. Research has indicated social class differences in adult friendship patterns, suggesting working-class adults are more likely to form kin-based friendships, whereas middle-class adults often have broader social circles [4]. This mirrors findings of socio-economic differences in friendship formation at university [5]. Working-class students are much more likely to commute to university due to financial constraints. This means that many of their existing friendships can remain intact and they ‘will not make as many new friendships as do residence students’ [6]. Socio-economic background is known to influence the extent to which students feel socially integrated into a university setting with middle-class students reporting a higher number of friends [6].

Friendships can provide ‘reciprocal support’ [3] and therefore can be central for supporting academic and social integration. ‘Working-class students tend to be less socially integrated at university than middle-class students’ [7]. The implications of being less socially integrated are a lower sense of belonging and less academic engagement for working-class students [8]. Integration into the university environment supports academic persistence and attainment [9]. Working-class students have significantly poorer outcomes for retention and progression in comparison to their middle-class peers [10, 11, 12, 13]. Therefore, the benefits of having friends at university are highlighted: ‘university friends can explain coursework assignments…act as study buddies…act as sources of social support…’ [9]. Friendship then is a protective mechanism for academic persistence. Therefore, socio-economic disparities in the likelihood of successfully developing friendships is of concern, with a greater need to understand how working-class students can and do make friends at university.

2. ‘Making friends’

‘Making friends’ features heavily in guides to starting university, with ‘top tips’ including: ‘create a WhatsApp Group with your soon-to-be flatmates’ [14], ‘keep your door open’ [15] and ‘hang in communal spaces’ [16]. First-year students are encouraged to put aside their fears about introducing themselves, as everyone else will also be keen to make friends. Some of this advice is aimed at students who will move away from home to study. However, it is evident that not all undergraduates will find this type of advice relevant to their personal circumstances. The ‘on campus’ assumptions often made about the ways in which students live have been highlighted [2]. Studies [17, 18] indicate that working-class students are less likely to live on-campus, have a greater commute time, familial commitments, lack financial resources and have paid employment commitments. However, the diversity of student backgrounds has begun to be recognised with some advice about forming friendships being offered to ‘commuter’ students. A ‘Student Room’ article [19] about making friends included a specific section for students who live at home and commute to university. Recommendations included considering Societies that offered daytime activities, having a coffee or lunch with coursemates after a lecture and occasionally staying overnight at a friend’s house to be able to participate in a ‘big night out’.

However, ‘fitting-in’ at university with a largely middle-class population may prove challenging [20]. Belonging at university involves a sense of connectedness to the degree programme, students, staff and institution. Conceptually, ‘belonging primarily concerns “emotional attachment” and feeling “at home”’ [21], although the experiences of working-class students starting university have been described as a form of ‘culture shock’ [22, 23]. Low socio-economic status (SES) students may doubt their perceived ability to make friends and fit-in [24]. Students from low SES backgrounds may be perceived by institutions to be ‘in deficit’ in terms of not belonging [25]. Canadian working-class students experienced ‘class–cultural discontinuities, such as not fitting in, “not feeling the university” and not being able to relate to other students’ [12, 20]. These findings are supported by a study [8] which suggested that not ‘fitting-in’ can lead to feelings of alienation and shame. This is in contrast to middle-class students who are likely to have wider social circles and are more likely to feel a stronger social connection to their friends and the university [6].

Friendship formation is a significant part of developing a sense of belonging at university, enhancing retention and progression. Therefore, this chapter considers the factors that support friendship development for working-class university students. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows: firstly methodology, secondly a thematic analysis and discussion of the friendship experiences of the participants (Theme 1: no time to socialise; Theme 2: proximity; Theme 3: differences; Theme 4: shared academic identities; Theme 5: reluctance to make friends) and finally a conclusion with recommendations.

3. Methodology

This chapter is part of a larger exploratory, qualitative study that focused on the university experiences of working-class women students’ (and included working-class men and middle-class women as comparator groups). This chapter focuses specifically on the ‘experiences of belonging at university’ in relation to the ‘formation of friendships’ of the 14 working-class students who participated in the research (12 women; 2 men). The focus of this chapter is on aspects of the two sub-research questions in relation to social factors influencing their experience of university and the extent to which they perceived their experiences of learning as positive.

The interview call for the study requested participants who identified as ‘working-class’ and/ or as ‘female’. A semi-structured interview was deemed an appropriate research tool due to the possible complexity of perceptions and experiences of each research participant. The interview schedule was informed by research literature on students’ experiences of university with particular emphasis on social class, gender and journeys into higher education. The questions were evaluated for being open and neutral and enabling participants to provide detailed responses. The interview schedule was supplemented by follow-up questions, such as ‘could you tell me a bit more about this?’ The interview schedule was piloted internally through the researcher adopting the position of a participant. The interview themes are presented to help researchers develop an interview schedule on the same subject. The interviewer asked the participants to self-identify their social class background like a number of other studies (for example, see [8]). The participants discussed their self-identification of socio-economic status in relation to factors such as parental occupation, familial experiences of financial hardship, and the level of education of their parents and if they were one of the first members of their family to go to university. Social class can be considered a ‘British’ concept and may not always translate effectively into other cultures and countries. This chapter has used terms such as low socio-economic status (SES) to accurately convey the measures used by other researchers in different contexts but refers to the participants in this study as ‘working-class’ as a term meaningful to them and based on the information provided about their familial backgrounds. However, information such as parental occupation often indicates the level of education achieved and financial position, with many countries using occupational scales to indicate socio-economic status regardless of exact terminology and the parameters of definitions.

The study drew upon the principles of life story narratives [26] to interview the students starting with when they first began to consider going to university, their academic and social experiences at university and their future career aspirations. The students were a mixture of second-year and third-year students, with an even split of seven students in each year group. These later stages of their university careers were sought as this enabled students to have a broader range of university experiences to reflect upon. Furthermore, given the challenges cited in making friends by the participants, it is likely that had these students been interviewed in their first year there would have been less stories of successful friendship formation, as the temporal element of this appeared to be key for the successful development of friendships. However, a number of studies have considered friendship in relation to the first-year experience specifically [27, 28].

The semi-structured interviews were conducted in-person or via Zoom (due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The interviews lasted between 30 minutes and 1 hour. The participants had the opportunity to member-check their interview transcripts [29]. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the researcher’s institution. The names of the three institutions and the names of the participants are all pseudonyms in this chapter. The study was mindful not only of issues of confidentiality and anonymity but also psychological distress [30]. Therefore, the interview schedule was made available to the participants ahead of the interview. The participants chose to answer all of the interview questions. The data in relation to the theme of friendship was analysed using the principles of ‘Labov’s six-part model: abstract (A), orientation (O), complicating action (CA), result (R), evaluation (E), coda (C) [31] with an emphasis on commonality across stories.

3.1 Participants and university contexts

The students were studying for degrees in Education (an academic study) or Primary Teaching. Institution 1 – City University: a research-intensive institution with a competitive selection process for student admissions. Institution 2 – Modern University: a large institution that gained university status in 1992 attracting students who are local to the city. Institution 3 – Established University: a former University College before gaining university status in the first half of the twentieth century. Established University attracts a number of local students from the relatively deprived area where it is located. Table 1 explains the interviewee demographics.

	Student (pseudonym)	University (pseudonym)	Programme of study
1	Thuta	Modern University	Education Studies BA
2	Audrey	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
3	Alison	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
4	Callie	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
5	Abigail	City University	Education BA
6	Eliana	City University	Education BA
7	Harper	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
8	Piper	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
9	Sienna	Established University	Primary Teaching BA
10	Owen	City University	Education BA
11	Trinity	City University	Education BA
12	Kennedy	Modern University	Education Studies BA
13	Juliana	City University	Education BA
14	Logan	City University	Education BA

Table 1.

Interviewee demographics.

4. Findings and discussion

4.1 Theme 1: no time to socialise

All 14 participants recognised socialising as an important route to making friends at university. Nine students were open to making friends when they started university, with 11 participants having formed friendships at the time of the interviews. For the nine participants who were keen to make friends, opportunities to socialise were often perceived to not be feasible due to a lack of time. Therefore, a lack of time appeared to be a significant barrier to forming friendships through social activities, while social activities were seen to be the primary way to form new friendships at university. Consequently, the nine participants who were open from the outset to making new friends, felt that the key mechanism in which to facilitate this was unavailable to them.

I do not have time to do social activities. The timetable does not permit it. Most of the activities are at night so I cannot really join. I’m only free Thursdays. They do not have activities I’m interested in on Thursdays. I know like my friends who are doing the same degree but I do not really have much time to spend with them and socialise with them. I just have to get on with my own thing which is taking all of my time. And yeah that’s one of the big things for me. I know I have to socialise and get a bit of experience, a full experience from university and get the most out of it. But it’s kind of hard to move on to that if you have got loads of responsibilities in your personal life. Yeah it’s not easy but I’m trying. You want to get all of them and sometimes you miss them. (Thuta, Modern University)

In my very first year I did try out for a University Cheer leading team…just to get that social aspect, but I found the workload too demanding and I had to like give it up. (Audrey, Established University)

I mean obviously I’m a lot older than your 18-year olds, but. You know, going to uni, coming home, cooking tea, getting the wash on, ready for my dad to come home. It is hard. (Alison, Established University).

A lack of time to socialise was related to working long hours in paid employment, childcare and familial commitments. A number of studies have reported that disadvantaged students are less likely to participate in social activities than their more privileged counterparts because of a lack of time or financial barriers [7, 32]. The time commitments of those who lived away from the university campus, due to paid employment or familial commitments were prohibitive to socialising, as was living at a distance from the university with a lengthy commute described by four participants (Owen, Audrey, Harper and Kennedy).

4.2 Theme 2: proximity

Of the nine working-class students who were open to making friends, the five of these who found this relatively straightforward (Callie, Abigail, Eliana, Juliana, Thuta) (apart from the time required for undertaking paid employment commitments for two of these students), were those who had found commonality with others through proximity (making friends through university accommodation or on their degree programme and in one case living at home, but in the locality of the university campus).

Quite a lot of them are actually from *Established University Town. I live quite close to three of my friends, within ten minute walks. One of them actually comes from *Suburb so he does travel everyday. But we are all based around this area. My socialising comes in at university. So we have two full days at university where we have a lecture in the morning and a lecture in the afternoon so we socialise in the middle over lunch. Sometimes we’ll come in on a day off just to study. It’s once every two weeks we all meet up, grab a couple of drinks. (Callie, Established University)

Second year and third year I definitely learned to balance more because obviously you are living with your friends so you get to see them. (Abigail, City University)

Like finals have finished now and we were sat in our living room this morning like what do we do with ourselves. We were sat doing general knowledge quizzes. That’s what our lives have come to. (Eliana, City University).

This suggests that for working-class students who manage to live away from home or live very close to the university, the barriers to the social aspects of university can be significantly reduced. Researchers have commented that ‘situational factors, such as proximity, the classes the individual attended, and the residence in which the individual lived’ influenced whom participants became friends with’ [6]. Research has identified that living farther than ten miles away from the university would lead to a weaker sense of belonging [32]. For those participants with proximity to the university, the opportunity and possibility of social integration was greater. Overall, these were a group of five students who found making friends generally easier because their location meant proximally that there were less barriers to accessing the social aspects of university. Furthermore, the working-class students who found friendship formation more straightforward with greater opportunities for socialising reported ‘lucky’ financial situations and the ability to socialise within a strict budget.

She got me work there in the holidays in second year which is easy so it’s like I’ve been working full time but when I’m here I can enjoy student life…I’ve been really lucky with it. Because I do not think I could have done- I feel like there’s the social life, the learning life and then the part time job and you cannot balance all three. I feel like I’d have to give something up… You’ve got to learn how to have a night out on a tenner otherwise you are in trouble. (Eliana, City University).

Researchers have argued that ‘student participation in social activities should be organised with much regard for those who have difficulties due to their socio-economic status’ [33]. However, while the working-class students who lived at university commented on their financial precarity, it appeared that their greater proximity to other students made socialising more feasible. Therefore, location appears to be in some cases more significant than financial resources for facilitating friendship formation. A study found that resident students made 5.65 new close friends and commuter students made an average of 2.57 new close friends [6].

4.3 Theme 3: differences

However, the working-class students who did live at university were more exposed to seeing a wider range of student backgrounds, including those from more privileged backgrounds, which meant that at times their differences to other students were very noticeable and this made identifying commonalities challenging:

I lived with a girl in first year who got everything paid for and got £100 a week sent to her from her dad, and she used to steal things and money from my room. That just shows does not it. She’s one of those people who takes it all for granted. If I was ever, my dad sending me £100 a week I’d be living the life (participant laughs). (Eliana, City University)

Abigail, also living away from home experienced ‘classism’ from other students in social settings:

There definitely is a social barrier when you are out, I think, in clubs or in bars. When they hear my accent for example they do not want to know you. And they definitely do not think you go to City University* either. I’ve been mistaken for a local and told there’s no way you go to City University*. And like, what are you doing here, and stuff. (Abigail, City University)

Therefore, although proximity to the university made making friends much easier as it was possible to engage in social activities (after factoring in time committed to paid employment and finances), this also often highlighted being different to other students, making forming friendships based on commonalities more challenging. For students who did not live at university, they too, were often different in some way to other students, which meant that they also experienced a set of barriers to forming friendships. For the three working-class students who had been open to making university friends, but had remained at home with a significant commuting commitment (Logan, Alison, Audrey), it had required a high level of persistence to form a friendship group:

With uni it was hard because, as I say, I’m a lot older I found it hard to speak to the younger people. I did make a friendship group but then I’d say I’d went onto another one that, they were a lot nicer. (Alison, Established University)

I was like kind of on the outside because I was older, and had a family and was a bit more mature so for me I did find it really hard fitting in and finding friends per se and I would say it wasn’t really until the second year that I actually started to make any friends at all, but of course that is because for me I had all these responsibilities. I have a child and I also think that because I wasn’t living in University accommodation I did not have that sort of social standing with them. (Audrey, Established University)

These were students who were often dissimilar in some way to other students and they did not have the advantage of living away from home and they found socialising difficult because of their other commitments.

4.4 Theme 4: shared academic identities

However, the social side of university appeared to become less of a barrier over time as academic identities became more important in the second and final years of university. The development of a learner identity at university can take a period of time as students adapt to the expectations of university [34]. These academic identities were an important source of shared experience and commonality and were instrumental in solidifying friendships for seven of the working-class students.

And they were more willing to do the course really. Whereas everyone was chatting during lectures and I just want to sit there and concentrate. (Alison, Established University)

I’ve found friends who also really want to strive. We constantly compare how we are doing, we always want the best grade, which you just, it’s amazing really because you do not want friends who just want to go out and say, oh I’ll just leave it. (Abigail, City University)

We just have a very similar mindset and because we have worked with each other before we do not have the worry if we do not like something the other is doing or the ideas. We do not have to bridge that or we have to be nice to that person we can just say it. (Harper, Established University)

I do have friends on the course. If we do group work, I will work with other groups as well, just get on with it really… I’m thinking about joining the Education Society, but I’m thinking that I’m just too shy to get involved. Although I’m thinking I will try to get involved next year. (Piper, Established University)

This was a group of working-class students who were keen to excel academically, (for example, see [25]), ‘students conceptualised themselves as high-achievers actively seeking academic challenges’ [25]. However, not all studies have identified working-class students in this way, with studies pointing to behaviours indicating less engagement with learning [35] and less confidence as learners [36]. Indeed, there are concerns that working-class students do not understand ‘how to play the game’ [37, 38] and do not possess the same level of cultural capital to access resources and support as their middle-class peers [39, 40], coupled with less capacity for autonomous learning [41]. Of course, it has been highlighted that there is not one single working-class identity [42]. Given that academic identities are often developed over a period of time [34], the study reported in this chapter is perhaps able to accommodate this temporal development with students being in the second and final year of their degree programme. Nevertheless, it has been identified that working-class students who have overcome academic challenges prior to going to university, can inspire high levels of determination to excel. For working-class students attending elite institutions, having a strong identity as a learner can enable these students to develop a sense of belonging, in a way that this aspect of their identity had not been socially acceptable within their school environment [23]. Two participants who chose not to make friends (Owen and Trinity) used their existing friends who were attending other universities as a source to share their academic experiences with.

4.5 Theme 5: reluctance to make friends

The findings will finally consider the five working-class students who started university without any intention to try and form university friendships (Owen, Kennedy, Harper, Trinity, and Sienna). Two of these were mature students (Harper and Sienna) and they did go on to make one friend each. They had the advantage of a number of mature students studying the same course with commonalities in lifestyle and personal circumstances.

At the beginning I was quite like I do not want to make friends with anyone…so I just kept myself a little bit guarded I suppose. There is one lady who went to the same Access course as I did so we had known each other for a year and we built a friendship through that and she kind of lives not too far from me so I would say she is like my best friend in terms of this aspect of my life.’ (Harper, Established University)

I literally went to uni to do the lectures, I did not socialise at university. And parts of me that think I missed that and I would like to have done that, but I went to university with a purpose of gaining a degree and that’s it. It wasn’t not to make friends, obviously I was open to making friends, but it would not worry me if I walked into a lecture of 100 people and did not know anybody, I was there to take the lecture…My one friend that has now qualified, I will be going back this year [after an interruption of study] with what are the current Year 2 s. So I will not know anybody and that’s not even crossed my mind as a worry. (Sienna, Established University)

For students on a course with a number of mature students – it was easier to identify shared commonality within this group of students. However, this also indicates that for some students making friends is an incremental process that takes time to evolve into a friendship. This suggests that induction events over the course of a year and pedagogic opportunities to work with others such as, guided group work [36] may help to facilitate friendship formation.

Three of the 14 working-class students did not form friendships with other university students (at the time of the interviews two were due to graduate and one was completing their second year of university). Two commuter students (Trinity and Owen) stayed embedded in their existing local friendship networks. Kennedy, a mature student who also commuted was attending a degree programme with students predominately aged 18–21. Therefore, the university context for these three students (one elite institution and one degree programme with limited mature students) meant that identifying a shared identity with other students was potentially more challenging in terms of similarities in socio-economic status or age.

I just felt like ‘the commuter’ if you like, like the guy coming to work. Everyone else is socialising or going out. (Owen, City University)

I just wanted to stay in the local area. I wanted to be living here. I wanted my friends. (Trinity, City University)

Well I do not really go out on nights out or anything from the university because they are all 18 or 19 year olds. And I do not go out that much anyway I do not really like drinking and things anyway. I will sometimes socialise on a dinner break or chat with people, but I do not bother with societies and things like that. I’ve already got my friends where I am so I do not really bother and they are all my own age so I do not seek a social group at university. (Kennedy, Modern University)

Arguably, this behaviour is a form of self-protection [43]. ‘This self-segregating behaviour is essentially a self-protective buffering strategy in the face of external threat. There is evidence from the literature that these students feel intimidated by the affluence and other markers of middle-class culture and lifestyle amongst other students’ [43]. A study [6] also indicated that those who were less open to making friends prior to starting university were likely to have fewer friends at university.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, this study has identified that working-class university students are likely to be open to making friends. However, they are likely to identify socialising as a key mechanism for making friends, while simultaneously identifying a number of barriers to socialising. The participants identified that an extended period of time was required to establish friendships, particularly if they commuted. Friendship formation appeared to become easier as academic identities became more established and the focus on socialising reduced. This study is limited in its scope and focuses on students in the UK higher education context only. Furthermore, like other studies in this area the data was collected at one point in time and is unable to account for any changes in experiences of friendship after the interviews. In addition, this study only tells us about working-class students who had persisted in their studies into their second and third years, therefore, this does not help us to understand the extent to which university friendships (or the lack of) may have led to early withdrawal from degree programmes by other working-class students. However, given that there is a ‘positive relation between quality of new friendships and adjustment to university’ [6], further consideration of how students can be supported to make friends is needed. In light of the finding that shared academic identities were perceived by participants to help foster friendships in this study, greater attention to if programme design can support this is worthy of future research. Social integration may be facilitated by academic integration and support a sense of ‘student identity’ [32, 44]. A previous study [6] identified that students at greater risk of poor adjustment to university (for example, commuter students) benefitted from participating in a programme that focused on social support. Furthermore, relationships with academic staff can facilitate a sense of belonging, particularly in the early stages of starting university and this is likely to be of particular benefit to students who take longer to make friends with fellow students [45]. This suggests that strengthening staff-student connections through personal tutoring and shared social departmental events may help academic staff to learn the names of students and take an interest in their academic performance, increasing the sense of belonging for students. Future studies exploring ‘belonging’ through programme design to facilitate greater social integration through academic engagement, alongside greater opportunities for academic staff to connect with students in the early stages of programmes should be further explored, possibly with the development of extended induction events to support the formation of student friendships.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by internal funding from the School Research Committee in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.