The purpose, aim and goals of higher education itself have been discussed and researched in the context of massified and marketised higher education in Germany, with a focus mainly on higher education national policies or the view of faculty staff. By shifting the perspective instead to the students, this article asks what higher education means…

This article aims to address the research question of which educational strategies are employed by upper milieus to establish or maintain the 'structure of distances' in the field of higher education in late modernity. Inspired by Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction and conflict, the study examined 95 qualitative interviews conducted with…