Abstract. This article focuses on the linkages between class, gender and student aspirations in the Nigerian and Thai cultural contexts. Building upon critical and feminist theory that employs class and patriarchal relationships to explain the role of educational institutions, this study examines the educational and career aspirations of 741 university students from two different cultural and academic settings.Based on qualitative and statistical analyses of the perceptions, family backgrounds, and expectations of a random sample of Nigerian and Thai university undergraduates, the study concludes that class and gender affect both university access, and students' educational and career aspirations once admitted to university. However, the results of this study also suggest that the specific effects of class and gender remain dependent upon the cultural milieu of which they are a part. Schools, and the social structures they represent, may expand students' goals and life chances. Unfortunately, this system can also repress them. And while these ideas are not new, analyses of how an educational system allows some folks to become "more equal" than others have proved difficult and controversial. Critical educational theorists have been concerned with the production and reproduction of class through schooling under capitalism (Althusser 1971, Bowles andGintis 1976), but their works were criticized for failing to deal with patriarchal relationships in schools (Arnot 1982). Later studies such as Willis's Learning to Labor (1977) focused on the concept of resistance, and the idea that individuals were not simply acted upon by abstract institutions. However, these studies also remained relatively uncritical of patriarchal, sexist attitudes (McRobbie 1980). To fill this void early feminist scholarship focused on the production and reproduction of gender inequalities under a system of patriarchy (Kelly and Nihlan 1982), while more recently the paradigms of critical educational theory and feminist theory have come to share a common concern with the relationship between individuals and an oppressive social structure (Weiler 1988).In the literature of North America, Europe, and developing nations class has long been regarded as an important indicator of academic and career success, even more influential, in certain circumstances, than a student's intelligence. For example, Dobson and Swafford's (1980) research on Soviet schools suggests a strong link between high socioeconomic status and high levels of achieved education. DuBey et al.'s (1979) and Onyabe's (1977) works on Nigeria suggest a similar pattern whereby socioeconomic status becomes an important predictor of achievement in schools.
42Though studies such as these underscore the important effects of class and educational attainment, we must question whether these relations remain constant for all students. In particular, does the level of socioeconomic status affect the expectations and educational attainment of male and female students in a similar manner?Rubin and Z...
