Academic capital

In sociology, academic capital is the potential of an individual’s education and other academic experience to be used to gain a place in society. Much like other forms of capital (social, economic, cultural), academic capital doesn’t depend on one sole factor—the measured duration of schooling—but instead is made up of many different factors, including the individual's academic transmission from his/her family, status of the academic institutions attended, and publications produced by the individual.

Academic capital originated in 1979 when Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), a prominent French sociologist, used the term in his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (translated to English in 1984). The book attempts to show how individuals are not defined by social class, but instead by their "social space," which is dependent on each type of capital the individual has. He explained:

“Academic capital is in fact the guaranteed product of the combined effects of cultural transmission by the family and cultural transmission by the school (the efficiency of which depends on the amount of cultural capital directly inherited from the family)” (23).

While Bourdieu discussed social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital at length, he did not explore academic capital in equal detail. His 1986 essay, “The Forms of Capital” does not refer to academic capital as one of the main types of capital that affects the success of individuals; therefore he does not see academic capital as being as important as other kinds.

Since Bourdieu first coined the term, it has been used widely—from France, the United States, Australia and Sweden—to discuss many of the implications involved with schooling and the rise of individuals in academia. Numerous studies have been done involving the idea of academic capital, and scholars have disagreed on what counts as academic capital.

Bourdieu’s definition of the term is applicable to any individual: even an individual interviewing for a secretarial position would benefit from having more schooling than another candidate. However, it seems that most references to academic capital refer solely to professional teachers and researchers within higher education. For example, in 2009, Michael Burawoy defined academic capital as being estimated from an individual’s curriculum vitae, but admitted that it was subjective because some fields of study seem to value certain academic qualities more than others—research, in psychology or study abroad, for scholars in linguistics.

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