Socioeconomic background is still a major force that can constrain chemistry students and influence their educational experiences, career aspirations and progression. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) that surveyed 863 students from secondary school to postgraduate education in the UK.
The report notes that 37% of chemistry students came from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (SEB), compared with 11% from a lower SEB, and chemistry drew 4% more students from a higher SEBs than all other subjects between the 2019–20 and 2023–24 academic years. The findings join previous studies such as the University and College Union’s survey on social class in post-16 education, which found that socioeconomic background is still a barrier to success in academia. A 2022 analysis by Goldman Sachs reported that the UK ranked third from the bottom in social mobility, compared with other similarly developed countries.
These figures link to the report’s finding that lower SEB students face disproportionate difficulty accessing an undergraduate chemical science degree in the UK, compared with all other subjects. The report further points out the additional challenges students face on entering the laboratory and teaching and research environments.
‘There’s a perception that everyone has the same choice, the same opportunities and there’s a real difficulty when it comes to understanding the challenges and obstacles [that come from growing up in lower SEBs],’ says Stephen Hendry, programme manager, inclusion and diversity at the RSC, who helped lead the work. ‘Socioeconomic inclusion is complex, especially when socioeconomic background intersects with other underrepresented identities, such as race, gender and sexuality. People are aware of socioeconomic background and the role it plays, but there are no real initiatives coming top down.’
The report suggests that access to the chemical sciences alone is not enough if the field still runs on unspoken rules that benefit those with prior advantage, such as financial stability or parents who have been to university. Several changes are suggested, including extending equitable access to enrichment opportunities like work placements and studying abroad, and investing in sustained interventions and research.
‘In the short term, it would be really good to use this report as a springboard to have honest discussions about some of the barriers and challenges in the chemical sciences. In the long term, this research would hopefully drive systematic change across the entire chemistry pipeline,’ Hendry says.
‘It’s a sensible start,’ says Tom Welton, a green chemist at Imperial College London who is an advocate for diversity in academic science. ‘We haven’t addressed class since the 1990s – at some point in the 1990s class disappeared from the discourse, but not in reality,’ he says. ‘It’s taken a long, long time for us to get back to being able to discuss it. In and of itself, that’s a good thing.’
Many of the challenges raised by students in the report ring true to Welton, a former RSC president. ‘I’m from a working-class background, and some of [these things] I could have said in 1982 in my first year at university. But some of them are new things, some of them are things that weren’t part of my experience then.’
In the survey students spoke of myriad concerns over the effects of a lower socioeconomic background when studying chemistry. These included facing ‘entrenched elitism’, struggling to know where to look for advice and finding balancing finances, study and work experience opportunities ‘overwhelming’.
The report found that – despite common narratives – students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are not less ambitious but instead face greater risks when making ambitious choices , which can limit their progression in the chemical sciences. One former student told the report’s authors that after graduating they had to start earning straight away, preventing them from exploring a range of career options. The challenge for these students is not aspiration, the report states, but a gap between aspiration and support.
‘The landscape is patchy, you know, and this is part of the problem. At the moment, your experience of – I’m going to use the word class – your experience of coming from a working-class background is going to depend very much on chance,’ Welton says. ‘What the report enables people to do is to get to a sensible starting place, rather than it just being a matter of luck whether you are going to get support, whether you feel comfortable talking about the issues you’ve got or asking for help.’
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