Eur J Educ. 2018;1–13. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejed | 1 © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12298 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Working class educational transitions to university: The limits of success Diane Reay Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom Correspondence Diane Reay, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, United Kingdom. Email: dr311@cam.ac.uk Abstract Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as England result in very different transition experiences to those experienced by young people growing up in relatively equitable socie‐ ties with strong communal links. Transitions of working class young people in England are beset with competition, individualism and low expectations. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, the arti‐ cle argues that working class transitions to university re‐ veal the failure of the English educational system to provide anything like a level playing field to support work‐ ing class young people who are seen to be educational successes. Focusing on those working class young people who are particularly successful by gaining access to elite universities the paper argues that even this small select group face discrimination, set‐backs, and a degree of social exclusion. The paper concludes that the vast majority of working class young people, including many of those who are the most academically successful have very different transitions to higher education, and experiences within it, from their middle and upper class peers. 1 | INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTUALISING TRANSITIONS For Ball, Maguire, and Macrae (2000), understandings of young people’s educational transitions need to focus on key contextualising aspects as well as the processes involved. They argue that time and place are pivotal to the ways in which transitions are experienced, but so also are wider dominant discourses and the broader social and political landscape. They single out the culture of individualism and the economics of individualisation alongside