Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1514428
13 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 JANUARY 2024 NEWS class a factor in MCAST prestige further and higher education institutions as opposed to the traditional academic university as a baseline." The researchers said the data provides cause for reflection: for the University of Malta, it would be about what is be- ing done within Malta's most prestigious and traditionally academic higher education en- vironment, "to challenge pat- terns of hierarchical thinking and entitlement among those who will most likely to go on to participate in the important conversations in Maltese soci- ety influencing distributions of wealth, social rewards and privileges." For VET providers on the other hand, the results raise compelling questions about the ever-present parity of esteem issue. "Parity of esteem largely ig- nores what she described as the 'elephant in the room', or rather, the problematic no- tion of upward social mobili- ty resulting from educational achievements. While one may strive for upward social mobili- ty through the pursuit of voca- tional qualifications, motivated by the idea that all qualifica- tions are equal, they are instead likely to encounter a rigid and inflexible social class structure that continues to be repro- duced across generations." Same qualification, no esteem Critical scholars have argued that VET has traditionally served as a system that directs working-class youths into tra- ditionally working-class oc- cupations, in the process re- producing socioeconomic inequalities across generations. In Malta, students from the Southern Harbour region, which registers lowest average incomes and property pric- es, are over-represented at MCAST, and under-represent- ed at UM. "The longstanding issue of achieving parity of esteem in this sense, is problematic. If VET institutions actually end up channelling learners into the subservient class of a fixed social structure, duly une- quipped to challenge the social and political status quo, then what are the real motives for overly enthusiastic promotion of VET, and associated promis- es of parity of esteem?" The researchers said that by associating prestige to UM de- grees, there appears to be no real material benefit conveyed by society to VET qualifica- tions. This in itself might lead to a 'changing of goalposts' so that entrenched class lines are kept in place, restricting access to working-class graduands to the rewards of higher social status. This becomes even more im- portant for the maintenance of a status quo where, as more and more graduates are pro- duced, the higher their ex- pectation that they can cash in "what they have been led to believe are valid status sym- bols with an exchange value for increasing their social cap- ital." The researchers say that if education is actually reinforc- ing class divisions instead of disrupting them, then quali- fications are simply become symbols, or what sociologist Godfrey Baldacchino termed as "status exhibitionism". "In other words, a critical in- terpretation of prestige as it applies to further and higher education, increasingly renders qualifications as referents, or accolades that serve to confirm existing social class, rather than change it," the research- ers said. "What seems to matter, ulti- mately, is that people identify- ing with a certain social class hold the right kind of qualifi- cations as an authentication of their existing status. The promotion of VET, therefore, or indeed any other initiatives pertaining to the development of Malta's rapidly-evolving tracked further and higher ed- ucation system, should argu- ably serve not only the aim of dismantling outdated assump- tions about prestige and priv- ilege, but also pursue broader policy reforms facilitating the real material conditions need- ed to act as genuine incentives for students considering VET pathways, regardless of their prior socioeconomic circum- stances." Students from the Southern Harbour region, which registers lowest average incomes and property prices, are over- represented at MCAST, and under-represented at UM