Low-SES Students Face Cultural Mismatch on Placements

By Student Voice AI

Updated Apr 03, 2026

Placements are meant to widen opportunity, but for some students they expose a hidden curriculum of confidence, culture, and belonging. A paper in Higher Education by Lisa Williams, Kathy Jordan and Tricia McLaughlin shows what happens when work-integrated learning promises employability, but support still assumes every student arrives with the same social and cultural capital. Their study, “They want people who are not me”: low socioeconomic status students' WIL experiences, is grounded in students’ own accounts of sourcing and transitioning into work-integrated learning (WIL) placements. For UK universities, the value of the paper is practical: it shows why placement feedback should be treated as an equity signal, not just a destination metric.

Context and research question

Widening participation and inclusion are prominent in higher education strategy, but unequal graduate outcomes persist. WIL placements are widely positioned as a route to employability, yet students from low SES backgrounds can face additional barriers to accessing and benefiting from placements.

Williams, Jordan and McLaughlin ask what low SES students experience as they secure placements and enter professional environments, and how those experiences can be explained through the “capital” students can draw on. The study uses a qualitative multiple-case design, focusing on four low SES students at a large urban Australian university, purposefully selected from a survey of more than 200 students. The takeaway for practitioners is clear: if placement success depends partly on cultural knowledge and confidence, universities need support models that surface those gaps early instead of assuming students will bridge them alone.

Key findings

Placements can amplify existing inequality when access and transition are treated as “self-service”. The paper highlights the hurdles low SES students can face in securing placements and moving into professional settings, even when WIL is framed as a universal employability benefit. That matters because a placement model that works only for students who already know the rules is not an inclusive employability strategy.

The authors interpret the placement journey through a contemporary capital model of employability. In practice, this means looking beyond formal skills to the cultural knowledge, professional language, and confidence students can draw on when they enter unfamiliar workplaces.

One of the clearest findings is that students can experience the workplace as culturally unfamiliar. As the abstract summarises:

"Low SES students face heightened self-doubt and feelings of cultural mismatch within professional environments."

These pressures are not just about skills. They are about belonging and authenticity, confidence, and the hidden curriculum of professional life: what is considered “normal”, how to communicate, and how to present oneself without feeling like you are acting a part. For universities, that is a student experience and widening participation issue, not just a careers issue.

Practical implications for UK higher education

UK institutions already collect rich placement feedback through module evaluations, local surveys, and NSS-style open text. This paper helps turn that feedback into clearer action. Student Experience, Careers and Employability, and Widening Participation teams can use it to sharpen support in four practical ways.

Make the hidden curriculum explicit. Pre-placement preparation can go beyond CV checks to cover workplace expectations, communication norms, professional confidence, and “what good looks like” in a placement week. Provide examples and scripts, not just signposting. This reduces guesswork before confidence dips become disengagement.

Reduce practical barriers that compound disadvantage. Travel costs, timetable inflexibility, and unpaid placement structures can make participation harder for students who do not have financial slack. Where universities cannot change external constraints, they can still offer targeted bursaries, earlier scheduling certainty for placement-heavy courses, and clear escalation routes when placements become unworkable. That is often the difference between a stretch opportunity and an impossible ask.

Build social capital around placements. Mentoring, buddying, and alumni networks can reduce the sense of “walking in alone”. Pairing students with near-peer mentors who have recently completed placements can be especially effective for confidence and norm-setting. Good mentoring makes workplace norms visible before the first day, not after a student has already stumbled into them.

Use student voice to monitor equity, not just satisfaction. Collect placement feedback at multiple points, before, during, and after, and include a short open-text prompt about barriers and support. With tools like Student Voice Analytics, institutions can categorise and benchmark placement-related comments at scale, then segment themes by cohort to see whether cultural mismatch, confidence, or support issues are concentrated in particular student groups. That turns free text into an early warning system instead of a pile of anecdotes.

If you want to see where placement support is breaking down for specific cohorts, Student Voice Analytics gives you a repeatable way to analyse placement, employability, and student support comments together. Pair that with our NSS open-text analysis methodology and student comment analysis governance checklist to build a more joined-up evidence model.

FAQ

Q: How can universities use placement feedback to spot widening participation gaps early?

A: Add a small number of consistent questions to placement check-ins, including one open-text prompt about barriers, support, and belonging. Analyse results by demographic and programme, then track whether themes change after specific interventions such as bursaries, mentoring, or pre-placement preparation. Free-text analysis is especially useful for picking up hidden curriculum issues that students may not report through rating scales.

Q: What does a four-case qualitative study add compared with large-scale surveys?

A: Surveys can show where gaps exist, but qualitative cases help explain how and why they form. Here, student accounts make visible the emotional and cultural work involved in “fitting in” to professional environments. For institutional decision-making, the best approach is to triangulate: use qualitative insights to design better questions and interventions, then use scaled survey and open-text data to test whether those changes improve outcomes.

Q: What does this mean for student voice in employability and placement strategy?

A: It strengthens the case for treating placements as part of the student experience, not a bolt-on. If universities only hear from students who are already confident navigating professional norms, they risk designing support that works for the easiest-to-serve group. Systematically collecting and analysing feedback from low SES and other under-represented cohorts helps ensure employability strategies do not inadvertently widen gaps.

References

[Paper Source]: Lisa Williams, Kathy Jordan and Tricia McLaughlin "“They want people who are not me”: low socioeconomic status students' WIL experiences" DOI: 10.1007/s10734-025-01464-6

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