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PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Res. Metr. Anal.
Sec. Research Assessment
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frma.2025.1566023
This article is part of the Research Topic Critique of the University: On Current Challenges for Research and Teaching and Possible Solutions View all 3 articles
Academia's Class Problem
Provisionally accepted- Waseda University, Tokyo, Tōkyō, Japan
The university has a problem with social class. Actually, it has two problems with class. The first one is that the university as an institution is still largely impervious to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In particular, people with middle and upper-middle-class backgrounds are overrepresented especially in very desirable tenured positions. This article offers a brief assessment of the problem, argues that more class diversity in academia is not only a matter of justice, but can also be epistemically beneficial, and finally formulates four desiderata for change.
Keywords: Class, classism, Marxism, University, Academia, Injustice, Justice, Research
Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 18 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Spiegel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Thomas J. Spiegel, Waseda University, Tokyo, 169-8050, Tōkyō, Japan
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