Conference Agenda

There is a long history of critical grading studies claiming that grades distort the very purpose of university education by fostering cramming, neoliberalist ideologies, competitive individualism, and external motivation to learning (see Nieminen et al., in press). However, such literature has largely focused on how grades shape student learning, whereas less is known about how grades shape students themselves. As one of the most influential social metrics in the lives of students (Rohde, 2023), grades are often perceived as “labels of who you are” (Löfgren et al., 2019, p. 271). But how exactly are grades related to students’ narration of ‘who they are’?

To explore this question, this study examines the ontological function of grading in providing students with opportunities to ‘know themselves’ as educational subjects. We examine narrative survey and interview material from students in two universities in Finland and Hong Kong to understand how students relate to themselves and the world as they narrate their grading experiences.

To do so, we acknowledge grades as relational practices. Grading is predominantly viewed as an objective act of measuring student learning outcomes; its history is rooted in educational measurement and psychometrics (Brookhart et al., 2016). To counter such typical views and to understand how grades operate within a social world, we rely on the sociology of quantification to examine how grades, as numbering practices, circulate in the world and influence students’ understanding of themselves (Mennicken & Espeland, 2019; Rohde, 2023). In doing so, we situate grades within scholarly conversations about ‘the quantified selves’ that increasingly rely on numerical data in creating their self-understanding (Lupton, 2016). Our times have been characterised as a metric society (Mau, 2019), an evaluation society (Dahler-Larsen, 2011), and as being permeated by audit cultures (Strathern, 2000). Yet grades precede the rise of such metric societies, permeated by digital data infrastructures. Does such an ‘old’ form of quantified data have new meanings in the metricised world?

Inspired by Latour (2005), we conceptualise grades as networks of connections – and nothing else (McClam & Sevier, 2010; Nespor, 1990). The answer to the question ‘what are grades’ becomes a question of what sorts of networks of relations are formed and sustained in the work of grading, and to what end. This follows the basic principle of Latour’s (2005) work in that actors can only ever be understood in relation to other actors: grades become with the world and the world – and students – with the grades, and nothing is primary to the other or exists as a singular entity. The relational approach to grades allows us to see the work that grades do in the networks of grading.

Students’ ‘identity’ similarly emerges within a network of relations. We rely on Piattoeva (2021) and Espeland (2015) to theorise grades as a process of de- and recontextualisation. Namely, the process of grading first reduces student learning into a number in a decontextualised manner. Yet students, as quantified actors (following Piattoeva, 2021), use grading data to build relations with themselves and the world. The ‘self’ is then not seen as a stable, individualistic attribute, but as an accomplishment: as stabilised networks that allow us to narrate ‘who they are’ in relatively stable terms (Nespor, 1990).

Following from this conceptualisation, we formulate our research question as follows: In students’ narratives regarding grades, how do they relate to themselves and the world?

In the context of widening participation in higher education and the inclusion of historically underrepresented groups, student funding has remerged as a recurring policy concern across Europe. In Germany—where tuition fees are negligible—recent developments have intensified financial pressures on students: high inflation rates and a shortage of affordable housing have made financing higher education increasingly challenging. While the German system of student support is dominated by means-tested public aid subject to partial reimbursement, a smaller pillar consists of merit-based scholarship schemes that primarily reward exceptional academic achievement and talent.

Over the past two decades, this merit-based student funding has expanded considerably alongside overall system expansion. This development has taken place through two main channels: first, a substantial increase in the number of scholarships awarded under the long-established Begabtenförderung (BGF; support for highly talented students); and second, the introduction of two additional merit-based programmes, the Deutschlandstipendium (DStip) and the Aufstiegsstipendium (UM). All three schemes allocate funding primarily on the basis of academic excellence. To varying degrees, however, they also take into account civic engagement and individual circumstances. Despite these shared principles, the programmes differ markedly regarding their target groups, benefit levels, and symbolic prestige.

The traditional BGF places a strong emphasis on outstanding achievement and talent as its core eligibility criteria and is widely perceived as highly selective and prestigious. By contrast, the newer scholarship schemes explicitly incorporate broader considerations: the DStip places greater weight on individual circumstances and social engagement, while the UM targets non-traditional pathways into higher education, particularly via vocational education and training. The programmes also differ substantially in their material and non-material benefits. Whereas the DStip provides a flat-rate stipend of 300 euros per month, the BGF and UM offer significantly higher levels of support conditional on financial need. Moreover, the BGF provides extensive “ideal support,” including mentoring, summer schools, funding for study abroad, and access to influential alumni networks. These features enhance its value not only as a financial resource but also as a powerful career-relevant signal, contributing to its reputation as a gateway to political and social elites.

For decades, the BGF has been criticised for its social selectivity and for reinforcing mechanisms of cumulative advantage by disproportionately benefiting students from already privileged backgrounds. Previous research has documented pronounced social gradients in access to merit-based scholarships, largely mediated by academic achievement (Haas & van de Werfhorst, 2017). More recent cohort-comparative evidence suggests a decline in overall social selectivity in scholarship access between 1994 and 2015 (Neumeyer, under review). However, systematic empirical analyses that explicitly differentiate between scholarship types and examine access patterns across students’ social backgrounds remain scarce.

Against this backdrop, this paper examines who is reached by different merit-based scholarship programmes in German higher education. Drawing on large-scale student survey data, we analyse access to the BGF, DStip, and UM across a wide range of sociodemographic characteristics and educational biographies. In this contribution, we descriptively assess first which student groups are advantaged or disadvantaged in receiving specific scholarships. Second, we investigate how academic achievement—arguably the central selection criterion—interacts with social background characteristics in shaping scholarship access.

From a theoretical perspective, we expect particularly strong achievement-based selectivity for the BGF, reflecting its pronounced signalling function and nationwide competitive selection procedures. We further anticipate lower levels of student diversity among BGF recipients and a predominance of traditional educational pathways, consistent with a cumulative advantage mechanism. In contrast, we expect the newer scholarship schemes to exhibit weaker achievement-based selectivity and a more compensatory orientation by explicitly considering underrepresented student groups and non-traditional educational trajectories.

Rationale

In recent years, global higher education has sought to pursue more inclusive practices, including the adoption of widening participation metrics. With the increased importance of research environment and research culture into assessment frameworks, such as the Research Excellence Framework (UK), RAE (Hong Kong) and PBRF (New Zealand), institutions are increasingly being pushed to assess their research culture and how it affects research output and quality. As such, research has started to understand how people from different and 'non-traditional' backgrounds experience these institutions, and how these interactions affect research cultures and environments (Reay, 2017). At present, however, many of these 'experiential' studies relate to stakeholders such as students, and academics. Studies relating to professional services and non-academic staff in higher education focus predominantly on what might be considered their 'human capital'; their job role, function and professional identity. In 2020/21 non-academic staff accounted for over 191,000 of total employees working in Higher Education Institutions in the UK alone (HESA, 2022). Research around personal experiences has therefore currently omitted over 41% of those employees, people who form a considerable part of the employee workforce in UK Higher Education (HESA, 2022).Yet, relationships between and among stakeholders are the foundation and the crux of developing positive research cultures in higher education. This paper presents preliminary findings from a research project funded the Society for Research in Higher Education. To better understand interpersonal relationships we conducted 7 focus groups using collaborative storytelling methodology over a period of 6 months, bringing together those in academic and non-academic roles from across institutions, disciplines and fields in higher education. This scoping study has potential implications for improving research culture and the research environment within which research takes place. Future study will extend this methodological template to other systems across Europe and internationally to produce truly comparative accounts.

Theoretical framework

Focusing on a world which holds different meaning to different people, one that is constructed in accordance with personal memory, experience and phenomenon enables greater emphasis to be placed on the elaboration of an individual’s personal history and circumstances (Braun & Clarke, 2021). As such, using collaborative focus groups is aligned with the theoretical approach of this study and questions will focus on issues of belonging and culture, in accordance with Bourdieu's understanding of the social world (Bourdieu, 1984). RTA and Bourdieu demonstrate complimentarity in their approach to understanding the sociology of university spaces, and the two combined are often used by scholars in the field (Crew, 2021, 2024; Pilgrim-Brown, 2023, 2024, 2025). RTA was specifically determined as an important method for the analysis of focus group data due to the lead researchers former roles working in professional services; RTA enables the open refleixve dialogue between transcript and analysis.

Research Questions

RQ1. How do professional services and administrative staff in UK universities conceptualise their relationships with academics?

RQ2. What does 'best' practice look like in the management of academic-professional service relationships in UK HE?

RQ3. What steps can be taken to optimise relationships (and therefore research culture) between academics and professional services staff in higher education institutions throughout europe?