Introduction

In the US, elite elementary and secondary schooling has long contributed to the creation and maintenance of the ruling class, by cultivating students’ privileged identities, easing access to highly competitive institutions of higher education, and nurturing networking ties that often translate to the corporate world (Cookson and Persell, 1985; Howard, 2008). Recent economic uncertainty and intensifying globalisation have shifted some of the complex forms of this schoolbased ‘class work’ to new domains (Weis et al, 2014). This chapter shares findings from a study that explores the recent proliferation of supplemental and substitutional educational travel programmes for elite high school students in the US. What types of programmes exist? What discourses circulate through these programmes’ promotional websites? What elite identities do these discourses reflect and construct?

Before we address these questions, this chapter briefly summarises the literature on elite schools and class formation, looks at the role of educational travel and ‘class work’, and outlines our theoretical framework, methodology and data sources. We argue that these programmes reflect the corporate elite's influence on education in two ways. First, they provide educational experiences that are purposefully separate and disconnected from public schooling as a means to confer distinction and advantage on elite children. Second, they represent what the editors of this volume refer to in the Introduction as ‘commodified, demanded, [and] supplied’ education.

Attending elite schools is not ‘enough’ to compete in the new educational marketplace; instead, students must make the most of extracurricular opportunities – such as these programmes – in order to reproduce and maintain elite status. Notably, discourses on these programmes’ websites show an attempt to construct a ‘better’ elite adolescent through claims of profound personal transformation and critiques of conventional elite schooling – all while reassuring families that participation will protect their elite status. While these programmes have never been intended for the general public, their existence represents the id of elite identity formation, rooted in a logic that embodies the ‘spirit of capitalism’ – the driving force behind many reforms of public education. For example, the personal transformation promised by these programmes embraces a meritocratic, personally responsible, entrepreneurial identity that is unlikely to disrupt efforts of corporate elites to transform public education.