Distributive equality,relational equality and preferences about higher education

Introduction

A variety of obstacles affect the higher education decisions of young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. This not only includes obvious injustices, such as discrimination by universities or secondary school systems that do not provide disadvantaged students with the qualifications necessary to compete for university places, but also more subtle obstacles, such as less knowledge about, and familiarity with, higher education among those from families without university experience.

In this article, I consider cases where students prefer not to attend university or prefer to attend less prestigious over more prestigious institutions. While preferences of this kind may seem a minor problem in the bigger scheme of inequality in higher education, the empirical literature suggests that they play a role in generating inequalities in higher education attendance. Moreover, the role that individual preferences and beliefs play in generating unequal outcomes is of concern not only in the higher education context but also in other areas, for example, choices about health-related behaviours, employment and which neighbourhood to live in. The question of how egalitarian theories should respond to such preferences is therefore relevant beyond the education context. For egalitarians, it is also important to be able to provide an appropriate response to arguments to the effect that it is sufficient to ensure that opportunities are available to those from disadvantaged backgrounds, irrespective of whether such opportunities are taken up.

Are scenarios in which disadvantaged students prefer not to attend (certain) universities a concern from the perspective of an egalitarian theory of justice? Starting from a quote of a working-class student describing such a preference, I consider this question from the respective perspectives of two prominent approaches to equality: distributive theories, which focus on the fairness of inequalities in outcomes, and relational theories, in which equality is conceived in terms of the relations among individuals. While distributive theorists seek to directly assess the fairness of distributions, relational theorists argue that our assessment of distributions must be guided by broader concerns of relational equality. As I suggest in this article, this difference in approach is also reflected in the debate about justice and education, in particular in the context of the debate about whether justice in education requires some form of equality or, rather, as theorists such as Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz have suggested, ‘adequacy’ of educational opportunities.

I argue that both distributive and relational theorists can identify as problematic situations in which disadvantaged students prefer not to go to university (or certain universities), though they will have different interpretations of the conditions under which such scenarios are problematic and what makes them problematic. However, this judgment is susceptible to the objection that it is counterintuitive that preferences that individuals endorse and identify with would be the source of unfair inequalities. In response, I argue that both distributive and relational egalitarians have good reason to challenge this objection; individuals’ preferences, even if the individuals themselves endorse these preferences, should not fall beyond the purview of egalitarian theory. The final section returns to the theoretical debate between distributive and relational approaches.

I should flag a couple of caveats about this article. First, the article draws on real-world concerns and empirical examples from the United Kingdom. These examples may not fully map on to contexts with different education systems and different issues around social class. Second, much of the article is exploratory: I am interested in how distributive and relational theories of equality approach individual preferences. Relational egalitarians have said relatively little about individual preferences and the role they play in creating distributive inequalities. Distributive egalitarians, on the other hand, have discussed this issue in a lot of detail, but the debate has proceeded in ways that, as I explain in more detail below, have been somewhat unhelpful and misleading. Finally, the article forms part of a larger project on the relationship between distributive and relational approaches to equality. In particular, one of the goals for this project is to make the case for a pluralist conception of equality that gives weight to both distributive and relational considerations (I say more about the relationship between the two views in the next section). I cannot make the case for that conclusion here; however, reframing the debate around equality in education in light of this broader debate about equality illustrates that these two approaches can bring complementary perspectives to egalitarian debates about real-world issues.

Declining opportunities for higher education: Distributive and relational concerns

Consider the following statement, made by a working-class student, describing his impression of Cambridge University, where he attended an admission interview:

It was a complete shock, it was different from anywhere else I have ever been, it was too traditional, too old fashioned, from another time altogether. I didn’t like it at all. It was like going through a medieval castle when you were going down the corridors. The dining room was giant long tables, pictures, it was like a proper castle, and I was thinking – where’s the moat, where’s the armour? Save me from this. You know, you expect little pictures with eyes moving around, watching you all the time. And I just didn’t like the atmosphere, not one bit . . . All typical private school, posh people . . . posh and white. (Quoted in Ball et al., 2002: 68)

The student was subsequently offered a place at Cambridge but declined.

Is this a problem of egalitarian justice? This case does not sit easily with (at least my) egalitarian intuitions. First, it seems plausible that the preference the student expresses will be costly to him: not going to university (or favouring less prestigious over ‘snobbish’ ones) is likely to leave the student worse off. ‘Worse off’ could mean different things here: It could be in terms of opportunities not only for high-paid employment but also for work that is interesting, stimulating, self-directed and so on. ¹ The student might also miss out on any intrinsic value that higher education has. Moreover, if the student does go to the university against which he has expressed a preference, he will also face a cost not faced by students who do not share this preference: attending an institution in which one feels out of place and alienated. ² Thus, irrespective of the choice he makes (whether he ends up going to a posh university or not), the student has a preference that puts him at a disadvantage relative to students who are happy with old-fashioned, posh universities; for this reason, I will call these preferences ‘disadvantageous preferences’. It seems intuitively unfair that the student should have to bear these costs.

Second, the idea that people from disadvantaged backgrounds would explicitly seek to avoid interaction with people from better-off groups and that they think of higher education as ‘not for them’ (i.e. as not for people from their class background) has a distinctly inegalitarian flavour. In a society of equals, we might argue, social divisions should be less pronounced and interaction across social boundaries less problematic than seems to be the case for the student quoted above.

These two concerns mirror two different ways of thinking about equality in the literature on social justice: ‘distributive’ and ‘relational’ approaches to equality. Distributive conceptions draw attention to differences in outcomes (such as welfare or opportunities) and ask when inequalities in such outcomes are fair or unfair. One of the most prominent versions of distributive theory is arguably luck egalitarianism, which considers inequalities in the relevant metric unfair unless they can be justified with reference to choices that individuals should be held responsible for (Arneson, 1989; Cohen, 1989). Relational egalitarians have challenged the focus on distributive outcomes, emphasising that what really matters from the perspective of equality is how individuals relate to one another, particularly in their capacity as citizens. Proponents of relational egalitarianism have described their accounts as aiming for ‘equality of status’ (Miller, 1997), ‘social equality’ (Scheffler, 2003, 2015) and ‘democratic equality’ (Anderson, 1999, 2010a). The kinds of phenomena that relational approaches single out as problematic typically include status hierarchies, oppression and stigmatisation of particular individuals or groups. A ‘society of equals’, then, cannot be defined in terms of distributions but must instead aim for all citizens’ equal status as members of the community.

Parts of the debate about equality in education have played out in terms of a disagreement between proponents of equality (Brighouse and Swift, 2009; Koski and Reich, 2006) and adequacy (Anderson, 2007; Satz, 2007). However, framing this debate as a debate between equality and adequacy (or between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions of distributive justice) ³ obscures the centrality that concerns of (relational) equality play in some of the arguments for adequacy in education. Elizabeth Anderson’s and Debra Satz’s accounts are explicitly motivated by a concern for equal status and equal membership in democratic societies. As Satz explains, her account sets out to

undermine the sharp contrast usually drawn between adequacy and equality as goals of educational reform and to offer reasons in support of an egalitarian conception of adequacy. On my view, a certain type of equality – civic equality – is actually internal to the idea of educational adequacy for a democratic society. An education system that completely separates the children of the poor and minorities from those of the wealthy and middle class cannot be adequate for such a society. Educational adequacy, on my view, is tied to the requirements of equal citizenship . . . (Satz, 2007: 625)

Similarly, Anderson (2007) notes that

the egalitarian goal is to create a society in which all of its members stand in relations of equality to one another in the major institutions of civil society, especially at work and in civic activities. . . . These goals set a minimum threshold of acceptable educational outcomes that varies with the general level of attainment in society. (pp. 619–620)

Proponents of adequacy in education, then, are not necessarily concerned with establishing any kind of distribution of educational or other opportunities for its own sake (that is, they are not distributive egalitarians, in the way I am using the term here): For relational egalitarians, distributions (irrespective of whether they meet requirements of equality or sufficiency) are not in themselves important. Rather, distributions matter insofar as they contribute to, or detract from, relational equality. Any argument for a particular distributive pattern must be based on how that pattern contributes to relational (not distributive) equality (Scheffler, 2003; Schemmel, 2011, 2012). In this article, I view the debate about education as part of the larger debate between distributive and relational egalitarians. To the extent that proponents of ‘adequacy’ are motivated by concerns for relational equality, this suggests a somewhat different perspective about what is – and what is not – at stake between proponents of ‘equality’ and ‘adequacy’ in the education debate.

While there is, as the debate acknowledges, significant overlap in what the two approaches require when it comes to education, the reasons they propose for endorsing similar requirements will differ. There is also scope for the two approaches to come apart: On the one hand, to ensure the goals of relational equality, such as equal status and equal membership in the political community, it may not be necessary to eradicate all inequalities in educational and other outcomes; this may leave distributive egalitarians worried that relational theories are not sufficiently demanding in their requirements when it comes to inequalities in educational opportunities (e.g. Koski and Reich, 2006). On the other hand, equality in educational opportunities may not capture everything that matters for ensuring equal citizenship, leaving relational egalitarians worried that central aspects of an egalitarian education system – such as diversity (Anderson, 2007: 597) – might not be captured by a purely distributive account.

What might we say, from these two perspectives, about the student statement quoted above? Neither distributive nor relational egalitarians must, I think, necessarily describe this scenario as problematic. From a (responsibility-sensitive) distributive perspective, a situation where an agent is worse off than others because she declined an opportunity that was offered to her seems like a paradigmatic case of unproblematic inequality: if working-class people do not want to go to university, then whatever disadvantages they face as a result of not going are not unjust. From a relational perspective, whatever disadvantage the student faces as a result of his preferences would be of concern only if it negatively affects relational equality, for example, by undermining his status as an equal; we would be worried about the student’s statement only if it reflected, or contributed to, relational inequality and, at least on the face of it, it is not clear that this is the case. In the remainder of this article, I want to suggest that both distributive and relational approaches, on at least some interpretations, can capture, in different ways, that there is a problem here.

Before I continue, a brief comment on the relationship between distributive and relational approaches. Relational views have emerged in response to distributive theories of equality, which seek to assess directly the fairness of distributions (e.g. of opportunities, welfare or some other equalisandum). Relational egalitarians are typically critical of such views and propose relational views as an alternative to distributive approaches. Distributive and relational positions are thus often seen as incompatible (perhaps the most explicit example of this is Anderson, 2010a). This way of conceptualising the relationship between distributive and relational approaches strikes me as problematic and in need of further argument. ⁴ For the purposes of this article, I assume that it is possible to adopt a view of equality that gives weight to both relational and distributive perspectives as identifying different aspects of equality. To my mind, the case discussed in this article illustrates the advantages of reconciling these two perspectives. The final section returns to this question.

Distributive equality and disadvantageous preferences

What, then, might a distributive egalitarian have to say about the student quoted above and the disadvantages he may face as a result of his preferences? What might luck egalitarians say about inequalities that result from individuals’ preferences (and their influence on people’s choices): should they count as ‘brute luck’ (to the extent that they are beyond individual control, for example, because they are due to how someone was socialised) or as ‘option luck’ (because people make choices)? As I argue in this section, it is certainly possible for luck egalitarians to argue that to the extent that the student ends up worse off than others, there is indeed an unfair inequality here. In fact, Richard Arneson and G.A. Cohen have developed interpretations of luck egalitarianism that are amenable to this conclusion. In their accounts, this argument can be made on the basis of two, somewhat different, grounds.

First, we can argue that there is an objective feature that characterises choices for which individuals should be held responsible, such as their ‘voluntariness’ or ‘genuineness’, where these notions are taken to exclude the influence of brute luck. Arneson ⁵ (1990) tends to emphasise the notion of voluntariness and notes that the question of whether we should compensate someone for disadvantages resulting from an expensive preference

turns on whether the preference was acquired in a substantially voluntary or substantially involuntary way. If the expensive preference was deliberately chosen [by the agent], or if his acquisition of it was a foreseeable by-product of a voluntarily chosen course of action, there is no case for redistribution . . . (p. 184)

Similarly, Cohen’s account focuses on what he calls ‘genuine choice’. He suggests that on his interpretation, equality requires that we think about people’s ‘genuine choice’ (Cohen, 1989: 934) and that ‘genuine choice contrasts with brute luck’ (Cohen, 1989: 931).

From this perspective, we would have to ask whether the preference our student expresses is ‘voluntary’ or ‘genuine’ in the required sense. While people can, of course, influence the preferences they develop to at least some extent, many factors beyond our control shape our preferences. In the case of young adults, moreover, it seems plausible to argue that because of their age, they would have counted as sufficiently mature to make voluntary choices only for a very limited time, so they cannot be regarded as responsible for the preferences they express.

A second consideration that is emphasised in Arneson’s and Cohen’s accounts is that choices can justify unequal outcomes only if they are made against equal background conditions. Cohen (1989), for example, notes that ‘[p]eople’s advantages are unjustly unequal (or unjustly equal) when the inequality (or equality) reflects unequal access to advantage, as opposed to patterns of choice against a background of equality of access’ (p. 930). Similarly, on Arneson’s (1990) account,

An opportunity standard of distribution leaves room for final outcomes to be properly determined by individual choices for which individuals are responsible, so that some inequalities of welfare are not even prima facie injustices because the inequalities arise by way of individual voluntary choice from an initial situation in which opportunities for welfare are fairly distributed. (p. 175)

What would the equal background consideration imply for the luck egalitarian’s assessment of preferences? To return to the student’s statement cited earlier, we can argue that to the extent that the preference the student expresses – that is, a dislike for posh institutions – is a result of the unequal background in which he grew up, luck egalitarians can worry about the inequalities resulting from this preference. Disadvantages resulting from this preference – for example, losing out on a higher salary or a loss in well-being when attending a university in which one feels out of place – would then be unfair.

Luck egalitarians, then, can argue that our student is not responsible for the preference he expresses (and that it would be unfair for him to bear any costs associated with it), either because the preference is not sufficiently voluntary or because it reflects unequal background conditions. ⁶

Rethinking the debate with the student quote in mind also gives us a different perspective on how the issue of preferences and their influence on distributive outcomes has been dealt with in the literature. In the debate around luck egalitarianism, this question has been discussed primarily within the debate about ‘expensive tastes’ – that is, tastes that make it such ‘that it costs more to provide [the person who has them] than to provide others with given levels of satisfaction’ (Cohen, 2004: 6). Examples of such tastes include a love for opera and an aversion to tap water (Dworkin, 2002: 288). Expensive tastes have been used in the ‘equality of what?’-debate to test our intuitions about which metric should be used to compare people’s distributive outcomes. Specifically, proponents of resource metrics suggest that the subjective ⁷ welfarist’s willingness to compensate individuals for expensive tastes is counterintuitive and embarrasses the welfarist approach (Dworkin, 1981; Schaller, 1997). Welfarists, in response, have tried to strengthen the intuitive case for compensation for (at least some) expensive tastes (e.g. Cohen, 1999, 2004). ⁸

Disadvantageous preferences are similar to expensive tastes in that like expensive tastes, they are preferences that can lead to inequalities in outcomes. A dislike for snobbish universities is ‘disadvantageous’ in the sense that this preference makes the agent less likely to apply to, or accept an offer from, a university perceived as such, thus foregoing any benefits associated with a degree from that kind of institution, or – if he does go – his preference is likely to mean that he will be worse off than his peers without this preference.

Reconsidering the debate in light of the argument presented in the previous sections highlights a number of problematic aspects of that debate. First, the debate falsely assumes that the problem of preferences can be settled by an appropriate choice of egalitarian metric. While the issue of expensive tastes is usually brought forward in the currency debate as a putative embarrassment for the welfarist position and in support of resourcist positions, the problem of disadvantageous preferences creates a problem for both welfarists and resourcists. What makes a disadvantageous preference problematic is that it leads individuals to make choices that leave them worse off than others, whatever our metric. Our student may end up with a lower salary (i.e. he will be worse off in terms of resources), but he may also end up with a less interesting, stimulating or otherwise desirable position; this would leave him worse off in terms of welfare. Much of the expensive tastes debate assumes that the question of how luck egalitarians must deal with individuals’ preferences affects only, or primarily, their choice of metric; however, as the notion of disadvantageous preferences suggests, deciding on a metric does not settle this question. ⁹

Second, the focus on expensive tastes has encouraged a skewed treatment of preferences within the context of distributive justice. Critics of (subjective-welfarist interpretations of) luck egalitarianism often assume that expensive tastes must be ‘trivial’ (Arneson, 2000b: 513) or ‘champagne tastes’ (Dworkin, 1981: 228), and that compensation for such preferences must involve indulging those who are ‘spoiled’ by their privileged backgrounds (e.g. Schaller, 2000). ¹⁰ The student case suggests a somewhat different picture: Background inequalities can affect preferences such that individuals’ choices are likely to replicate or deepen these inequalities. Being sensitive to such effects may not only be consistent with but in fact required by an egalitarian theory of justice.

Finally, the debate around expensive tastes is sometimes seen, even by theorists sympathetic to compensation for such tastes, as having little import for the real world. Cohen (2004), for example, notes that

each person’s satisfaction function will likely be an amalgam of cheap and expensive tastes, and few may have expensive tastes in an aggregate sense . . . This fact is relevant to practical politics. It is certainly a reason for not worrying too much, in many practical contexts, about compensating people for expensive tastes. (p. 6)

Thus, even though they raise interesting philosophical questions, ‘[e]xpensive tastes may be peripheral to the practice of justice’ (Cohen, 2004: 7, emphasis in original).

This assessment, however, seems overly optimistic. It may well be the case that unequal background conditions help create preferences that then make it more likely that individuals make choices that reproduce existing inequalities. We can see one such mechanism at work in the student quoted above, and the empirical evidence suggests the unequal brute luck systematically influences young adults’ preferences about higher education (Voigt, 2007). Thus, while much of the expensive tastes debate has proceeded with reference to abstract and unrealistic examples, the issue at stake – how must a theory of distributive justice respond to individuals’ preferences? – is very relevant to the real world.

Relational equality and disadvantageous preferences

What might we say about the student quote from the perspective of relational equality? To recall, relational egalitarians focus on the character of the relations between individuals. Distributive inequalities, for them, are not in and of themselves problematic. For a relational egalitarian, it would therefore not be enough to simply point to the disadvantage faced by the student and describe it as unfair.

In contrast to the luck egalitarian position I sketched in the previous section, relational egalitarians typically do not accept that the influence of social background on people’s choices (and the inequalities to which that may lead) should necessarily be considered problematic. As Satz (2012) argues,

[E]ven in a just society . . . there will be a variety of lives, and the lives people choose will inevitably be influenced by their social and cultural backgrounds. . . . The response to this fact is surely not that all such influences are problematic. Our cultural and social backgrounds help make us who we are. Fair equality of opportunity cannot reasonably be aimed at every difference in outcome between individuals, even with respect to those differences in life prospects that are socially influenced. (p. 161)

Rather, inequalities in outcomes would become problematic if they are inconsistent with relational equality. Anderson (2010b: 18) suggests three different ways in which inequalities in outcomes become problematic from a relational perspective. First, inequalities in distributions can be unjust if they embody unjust social relations; male-only franchise, for example, embodies unjust relations between men and women. Second, some distributions cause unjust relations. Relational equality requires that distributions (a) ensure all citizens’ equal membership (e.g. enough food, decent clothes to appear in public, wheelchair-accessible public buildings) and (b) ensure fair opportunities for all citizens to develop their talents. Finally, inequalities in distributions can be caused by unjust relations, for example, as a result of group discrimination or other forms of unjust treatment. These different connections between relational equality and distributions are reflected in how relational egalitarians have approached education.

Equality and individual preferences

So far, my concern has been to argue that if interpreted in particular ways, both distributive and relational views about equality can capture the intuition that there is something problematic about the student statement quoted at the beginning of the article. Of course, not everyone will share the intuition that there is indeed something problematic here. One concern we might have about the interpretations of distributive and relational equality I sketched in the previous sections is that they allow for the possibility that preferences that individuals identify with and consider central to their conception of the good become sources of unfair inequality.

In the literature on distributive equality, Ronald Dworkin has developed this concern in a lot of detail, and in this section, I will focus on his argument. However, in the relational literature, too, such concerns are sometimes voiced. For example, Satz (2012) is concerned that ‘who we are’ cannot be the source of unfair inequality: ‘Fair equality of opportunity . . . does not condemn all socially generated inequalities: some of these inequalities are not sources of disadvantage; some of these socially generated differences make us who we are’ (p. 164, emphasis added).

Dworkin (1990) argues that any acceptable conception of equality must cohere with the ethical judgements we make in our personal lives (p. 17). This is inconsistent with a view of equality according to which preferences are seen as a matter of luck:

We . . . do not count the fact that we have reached some particular moral or ethical conclusion as a matter of good or bad luck. That would be to treat ourselves as dissociated from our personalities rather than identified with them – to treat ourselves as victims bombarded by random mental radiation. We think of ourselves differently – as moral and ethical agents who have struggled our way to the convictions we now find inescapable. (Dworkin, 2002: 290)

On Dworkin’s account, inequalities can be unfair only if individuals could, coherently, in their own lives, ask for compensation for the disadvantage they are facing. Disadvantages that arise from beliefs, judgements and the preferences we endorse do not meet this criterion: we cannot, Dworkin suggests, coherently think that the preferences we endorse and identify with in the required sense are a matter of luck to us, or as something that could be beyond our responsibility and for which we should be compensated.

On Dworkin’s account, drawing the line between preferences for which individuals are owed compensation (which he calls ‘cravings’) and those for which egalitarians should not compensate requires that we consider the agent’s attitude towards the preference in question. Preferences that agents should be held responsible for are preferences that follow our considered judgements about which things have independent value (Dworkin, 2002: 293) and fit within the complex system of other beliefs and judgements a person holds (Dworkin, 2002: 291). Perhaps most important to Dworkin’s account is what has been called the ‘endorsement test’ (Clayton, 2000: 73): if we would choose to maintain a preference even if given the option to be relieved of that preference (Dworkin often uses the idea of offering a costless pill that would rid us of the preference in question), then this is a preference we should be held responsible for. In Dworkin’s (2004) terms, ‘a “taste” is a handicap if one would prefer not to have it’ (p. 392).

What would this mean for the disadvantages faced by the student quoted above? Dworkin would have us approach this situation by asking whether the student endorses the preference (a dislike for snobby universities): only if he would prefer not to have this preference is there a case for saying that any resulting disadvantage is unfair.

One natural response to Dworkin’s argument is to suggest that we simply reframe the problem. When it comes to the student, we could argue that the source of disadvantage is not the preference itself but the context in which the student must choose – it is that context (where degrees from posh universities come with distinct advantages) that makes the preference expensive. Cohen has suggested a response along these lines to Dworkin’s concerns. The bad luck, Cohen (2004) suggests, is not the preference itself but that the preference happens to be expensive. The problem Dworkin describes does not arise if we think of the student as asking for compensation for the fact that his dislike for snobbish universities comes at a cost, rather than the preference itself.

However, there are a couple of further points to make in response to Dworkin’s argument to challenge the discomfort with the idea of individuals’ endorsed preferences as sources of unfair inequality. First, our intuitions about preferences are, I think, less clear-cut than Dworkin acknowledges. People can, and do, take responsibility for their preferences while at the same time acknowledging external influences on their beliefs and convictions. We do think of ourselves, as Dworkin suggests, as ‘moral and ethical agents who have struggled our way to the convictions we now find inescapable’ (Dworkin, 2002: 290). This, however, does not prevent us from acknowledging that what we did in the end come to believe was affected by various factors of our environment, such as our upbringing, education and specific experiences. ¹² While we have both these intuitions – feeling responsible for our preferences and recognising the way in which these were affected by external influences – Dworkin’s argument seems to pay little attention to the latter. Even if we accept, then, Dworkin’s suggestion that there must be continuity between the judgements we make in our ethical lives and those we make in the political sphere, it is not clear that Dworkin’s approach actually achieves such continuity.

Second, Dworkin (1990) notes that ‘liberal equality depends on a sharp and striking distinction between personality and circumstance’ (p. 39) and suggests that factors that constitute part of our personality cannot be the source of unfair inequality. This, however, is only one possible interpretation of the basic luck egalitarian claim that we must distinguish inequalities depending on whether they are the result of ‘chance’ or ‘choice’; luck egalitarians could also interpret this idea as requiring that inequalities resulting from the influence of ‘chance’ on people’s preferences and choices are potentially unfair. Dworkin’s position effectively moves individual preferences (or at least those preferences that individuals endorse) out of the purview of egalitarian theory. This strikes me as an unattractive implication of his approach, and luck egalitarians need not be committed to this position.

This matters, not least because many of the circumstances that shape individuals’ preferences are factors that we can influence: policy decisions can affect what kinds of preferences people come to have. To the extent that we can predict how particular policies or institutional arrangements will affect the formation of individual preferences, it is not unreasonable that we would want to take these effects into consideration. For example, if diversity in schools helps reduce class divisions and leads individuals to be less concerned about ‘fitting in’ in terms of their class background, this would give an egalitarian policy-maker a reason to encourage such diversity.

Relational and distributive equality revisited

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, underlying the argument presented here is the idea that distributive and relational theories of equality are not incompatible. Moreover, there is scope for a pluralist notion of equality in which both distributive and relational considerations play a role. While I have not made that argument here, the higher education context and the particular case I focused on highlight the complementarity of the two perspectives. Both distributive and relational perspectives capture something important about equality that the other approach cannot capture (or cannot capture in the right way).

I suggested that we can frame the equality versus adequacy debate in terms of the debate between distributive and relational approaches to equality. From a relational perspective, what matters is that the education system must contribute to equality of status: this will have certain implications for what the education system must look like and how educational opportunities are to be distributed, but the distribution of these opportunities does not matter in and of itself. From a distributive perspective, on the other hand, adequacy in education is not enough because it leaves too much scope for unequal education to result in inequalities in other outcomes, such as income (e.g. Koski and Reich, 2006); for distributive egalitarians, these inequalities are unfair in and of themselves.

When it comes to the case of the student and his dislike for snobbish universities, distributive and relational egalitarians ask very different questions to identify the problem at hand. For distributive egalitarians, the concern is with the disadvantage that comes with the student’s preferences. Relational egalitarians, because they reject the idea that distributions matter intrinsically, cannot (or at least cannot easily) capture the concern that there is something unfair about the discomfort and unease a non-traditional student might feel at a prestige university, unless they can make the case that this results from unjust treatment or is in other ways connected to relational inequality.

Relational egalitarians, however, would have a different take on what might be problematic about this case. Their concern would be to determine which connection, if any, the student’s preference has with relational inequality. As I suggested earlier, they might ask whether the preference for associating with people who share one’s background over people from different backgrounds is consistent with a society of equals. Both these concerns – the welfare loss of non-traditional students in prestigious universities and the discomfort with interaction across social boundaries – are arguably important concerns a theory of equality should be able to capture.

The responses that distributive and relational egalitarians could propose to address the problem they identify also differ. From a distributive perspective, because it is the distributive inequality that matters, one way to respond would be to reduce the advantages that come with higher education (in terms of income, access to interesting jobs, etc.). If we were able to remove all these disadvantages, then a decision not to go to university would no longer matter. Similarly, if no advantages are attached to a degree from a posh university relative to a degree from a ‘regular’ university, then a distributive egalitarian might not see a problem with a higher education system that is divided in ‘posh’ and ‘regular’ universities. Similarly, for a distributive egalitarian, what matters is that the student not suffer disadvantages because of a preference he should not be held responsible for. From this perspective, there is no relevant difference between a dislike for posh universities and, say, a dislike for universities located in cities rather than the countryside, if there were similar costs attached to such a preference. This, it seems, misses out an important dimension of what makes the student’s statement troubling.

To the extent that a relational perspective would consider the content of the preference expressed problematic, this assessment would remain even if the preference did not result in disadvantages for the students: from a relational perspective, it is the relational inequality that matters, irrespective of its impact on distributive inequalities. Christian Schemmel discusses the example of a piece of legislation that violates requirements of relational equality because it has racist intentions. The law, Schemmel (2012) argues, would remain problematic from a relational perspective even if, for reasons the legislator was not aware of, it actually leads to positive consequences for the targeted group:

Even if it will regularly happen . . . that such laws lead to overall social inferiority of the members of the group . . . this need not be the case for them to be unjust. They would not cease to be unjust even if their targets experienced a boost in self-esteem, for example, due to their solidarity in indignation. (pp. 140–141, emphasis in original)

These examples highlight that distributive and relational conceptions of equality propose very different ways of thinking about equality in the (higher) education context. At the same time, it is certainly not obvious that either of the two perspectives is superior to the other; both distributive and relational approaches have something important to add to the discussion of equality in education.

Conclusion

I started with a quote from a working-class student who has a dislike for posh universities, leading him to eventually decline an offer from a prestigious university. I focused on higher education choice and a very specific kind of preference. However, the issues raised here may also help us think about other scenarios where individuals’ preferences influence their choices – think, for example, of a female philosophy student who is considering graduate school but does not want to work in a field in which representation of women is so low. There may also be scenarios beyond the higher education context where these considerations matter; for example, where people choose to live may reflect considerations of ‘fitting in’, in terms of class and ethnicity. This matters not least because neighbourhoods, of course, differ significantly in terms of the advantages they confer on their residents (e.g. available green spaces, public services, safety).

As I argued in this article, both distributive and relational theories of equality can, on at least some interpretations, describe this scenario as problematic. One problem that both approaches run up against is that we often think that preferences, especially when they are explicitly endorsed, are too closely related to ‘who we are’ to be sources of unfair inequality. I suggested that there are good reasons for wanting to locate individuals’ preferences, including those they endorse, within the purview of egalitarian theories – both as potential sources of unfair inequality and as reflecting (in)egalitarian attitudes.