(Post)graduate Education Markets and the Formation of Mobile Transnational Economic Elites

Undergraduate and postgraduate education has increasingly been framed by policymakers and employers in advanced economies as an important way of improving graduate employability and enhancing economic growth within knowledge-based economies. This is particularly true in knowledge-intensive business services such as finance and law. However, graduates seeking to enter these elite labor markets have faced increased competition in recent years. This has been driven by the massification of higher education, as well as the recession following the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Research has identified a range of responses, such as studying overseas, among graduates seeking to increase the scarcity value of their credentials as a way to improve their employability. In this chapter, I examine another emerging strategy that has received less attention—the growing use of postgraduate educational services and training. The author argues that attaining additional credentials is an important strategy among graduates seeking entry into elite global labor markets and, consequently, a factor in the (re)production and circulation of geographically variegated economic elite knowledge-practices.

level (i.e., beyond bachelor's degree) represents an important means by which earlycareer fi nancial elites are inculcated into the meanings and competencies associated with normalized, legitimated business practices in London and into the corporate culture of their employing fi rm.
I suggest that these forms of education, alongside the more widely studied forms of educational background, have important implications for both the spatial and social mobility of fi nancial elites. My approach advances understandings of the spatial mobility (or otherwise) of fi nancial elites. In this respect work on elites has more generally often labeled them as, for example, a transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001 ) or global elites (Castells, 1996 ). These labels, and the discourses that surround them, suggest a highly mobile group of topologically linked individuals who are only loosely embedded in topographical space while being situated within particular geographical locations, cities, or regions. However, by focusing on the role of education in elite formation, I suggest that elites combine elements of both topological mobility and connectedness with topographical specifi city because their working practices and careers are shaped in part by the still largely national educational systems in which they are produced and the distinctive working cultures associated with different, place-based economies-the international fi nancial centers in the case of the fi nancial elites I study here. Meanwhile, I suggest that socially the case of fi nance demonstrates how many of the networks created through postgraduate education continued to be structured along social lines. In particular, mobility into and within elite fi nancial labor markets remains comparatively limited to an educational and occupational elite, in spite of the widely held view that the growing importance of postgraduate education signaled the rise of a more meritocratic global economy-and City of London in particular-where individuals can succeed if they invest appropriately in their human capital (Becker, 1994 ). Taken together, I therefore argue that postgraduate education is an important but hitherto comparatively overlooked element in creating fi nancial elites who combine elements of topological fi nancial networks inseparable from the topographical dimensions of socioeconomic practice in fi nancial services. I develop these arguments over four further sections. In the next section, I examine how work on the role of educational background, particularly in the sociology of education, can be developed to provide a fuller understanding of the role of ongoing education in shaping socioeconomic practice within elite labor markets. I then introduce the different elements of the postgraduate landscape as they pertain to fi nancial elites working in investment banking in the City of London. In the fi nal substantive section of the chapter, I consider the spatial implications of this ongoing education for a group of early-career fi nancial elites employed by investment banks often assumed to be unproblematically transnational and highly geographically mobile. I conclude by refl ecting on the implications of this argument for work on the geographies of elites more generally and on their spatial and social (im) mobility.

Financial Elites, Education, and Socioeconomic Practice in the City
As noted in the introduction , the relationship between educational background and entry into elite networks has been extensively studied, led by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1980Bourdieu ( / 1990Bourdieu ( , 1989Bourdieu ( / 1996. A central component of this research is Bourdieu's identifi cation of three interrelated forms of capital (economic, social, and cultural) that form an individual's habitus ( Bourdieu, 1980( Bourdieu, / 1990. Work in the sociology of education has focused particularly on institutional capital , arguing that it is gained through the acquisition of education credentials, as well as through membership in other formal groups (see, for example, Waters, 2007 ). However, although Bourdieu only discusses education explicitly in relation to institutional capital , research, particularly in the sociology of education, has revealed how education also plays an important role in the acquisition of the other forms of cultural and embodied capital as individuals learn accepted ways of being and doing through their educational experiences (Brown, 2000 ;Brown & Hesketh, 2004 ;Waters, 2009 ).
This emphasis on the ways in which institutional, cultural, and embodied capital is acquired through education has been particularly evident regarding the relationship between education and the fi nancial elites focused on in this chapter. Most notably, in the case of the City of London educational credentials from a small number of fee-paying public schools and elite universities, the University of Oxford and Cambridge in particular, have been identifi ed as key determinants of successful entry into London's fi nancial labor markets prior to the deregulatory changes of Big Bang in 1986, (Kynaston, 2002 ;McDowell, 1997 ). Educational credentials obtained from these institutions acted as a form of institutionalized cultural capital by indicating the possession of the objectifi ed and embodied forms of cultural capital associated with "gentlemanly" capitalism (Augar, 2001 ). Indeed, as Thrift ( 1994 , p. 342) has argued, gentlemanly capitalism was based "on values of honor, integrity, courtesy and so on, and manifested in ideas of how to act, ways to talk [and] suitable clothing" (see also Tickell, 1996 ). These embodied forms of working in the City have been argued to have had important implications for how the City was regulated by dense social networks based on shared educational backgrounds, through which trust based relationships could be formed (Pryke, 1991 ). More recent work has revealed how newer forms of educational credentials continue to reproduce the importance of the relationship between the educational background-based entry into fi nancial elite labor markets and the embodied, institutional, and cultural capital needed to work successfully in these environments. For example, Masters of Business Administration (MBA) alumni networks from leading business schools have been shown to be an important way of securing upward career progression within investment banks, especially those headquartered in the United States where the MBA is more fully integrated into investment banking career pathways (Hall, 2008 ).
However, despite the acknowledged importance of educational background in securing entry into these elite labor markets, it is important not to paint a naively simple picture in which obtaining credentials from elite educational institutions was the only way of entering fi nancial services work in the City of London. Such caution is particularly important given the marked changes in the nature of elite fi nancial labor markets and work in the City of London that have occurred since much of the literature on " gentlemanly capitalism" was written in the 1980s and 1990s. Of particular importance for my focus on investment banking labor markets in this chapter are the changes associated with fi nancial services work during the period of rapidfi nance-led growth and innovation in the 2000s (Engelen, Konings, & Fernandez, 2010 ;Froud, Johal, Leaver, & Williams, 2006 ). Alongside the growth of new fi nancial products, particularly securitization requiring greater technical competency and quantitative skills, this period saw elite fi nancial labor markets in London expand beyond employment in merchant and investment banks to include new forms of fi nancial intermediation offered by actors including private equity fi rms, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds (Folkman, Froud, Johal, & Williams, 2007 ;Wójcik, 2011 ). The related diversifi cation and growth in elite fi nancial labor meant that the old-school-network forms of recruitment based on educational background could no longer provide the number of elites demanded by fi nancial labor markets (Leyshon & Thrift, 1997 ), suggesting changes in the relationship between education and elite fi nancial work. In particular, these developments indicate that research needs to focus not only on the relationship between educational background and fi nancial elites, but also on the ways in which education, including that undertaken after a fi rst undergraduate degree, was important in securing entry into elite fi nancial labor markets and inculcating individuals into the required skills, competencies, and new forms of embodied and cultural capital demanded by the changing nature of the City of London. These concerns form the basis of the rest of this chapter, in which I draw on the case of early-career investment bankers in examining the intersection between postgraduate education and everyday socioeconomic practice in the City in order to better understand the role of education in inculcating elites into particular working environments and its geographical implications for those persons often assumed to be globally mobile fi nancial elites.

Postgraduate Education and Legitimate Elite Financial Practice
To address these concerns, I turn to a set of arguments made by Bourdieu (1980Bourdieu ( / 1990Bourdieu ( , 1989Bourdieu ( / 1996 concerning everyday socioeconomic practice , to his work on doxa-an idea still not widely developed in relation to education (although, see also Faulconbridge & Hall, 2014 ). In so doing, my analysis draws on the wider interest in normalized practice within socioeconomic life as it relates to processes of learning and the reproduction of practices in geographically specifi c ways (Amin & Cohendet, 2004 ;Wenger, 1998 ). For Bourdieu, assumptions and understandings about appropriate everyday practice in any given context, or doxa, strongly infl uence an individual's actions and thoughts . This insight is important for the arguments in this chapter for two main reasons. First, the concept of doxa suggests that the everyday socioeconomic practices of fi nancial elites need to be understood in relation to the geographically specifi c understandings of what constitutes legitimate behavior in any given spatially situated economy. This raises signifi cant questions about the role of education in reproducing these understandings because its part in inculcating early-career elites into the accepted and legitimated forms of action within-as regards this chapter-the City of London. Second, and following on, Bourdieu highlights through his work on doxa the situated nature of elite action . By considering the situated and co-constitutive characteristics of education and doxa in a particular fi eld, it becomes possible to highlight the causes of geographically variegated elite practice.
The research I present in the rest of this chapter develops these insights by examining the role of post-fi rst-degree (undergraduate) education in shaping the beliefs , attitudes , and working practices of earlier-career fi nancial elites in the City of London. In other words, I seek to address in this chapter how education is used to inculcate these elites into the situated nature of legitimate socioeconomic activity in London's fi nancial district. In so doing, I challenge assumptions that education facilitates the reproduction of a globally homogeneous elite class, entry into which has become more meritocratic because of the declining importance of educational background. Rather, I use these theoretical insights to reveal the ways in which elite fi nancial work combines both topological and topographical components at different stages in the career life course to enhance social and spatial mobility for some while restricting it for others.

Researching Early-Career Financial Elites in London's Financial District
The analysis below is based on original empirical research conducted with earlycareer investment bankers and others professionals in London's international fi nancial district. The research centered around 105 interviews conducted with that can be broken down into: investment bankers working in London at an early stage in their careers to discuss their postgraduate education and training experiences (53 interviews including U.K. and non-U.K. nationals); human resource managers in investment banks in London (6 interviews); educators and managers of for-profi t fi nancial business education fi rms in London (10 interviews); and lecturers and managers in international business schools (36 interviews). Interviews were transcribed in full and analyzed iteratively, with theoretical frameworks used to guide the initial coding. All respondents have been made anonymous and unidentifi able in the analysis below. These interview datasets were triangulated with desk-based reviews of: investment bank and education providers' websites to gather information about the wider educational landscapes available for early-career investment bankers; business and specialist new providers to document recent developments in postgraduate education and training in elite fi nancial labor markets; policy documents from U.K. government departments, particularly the Department for Innovation, Universities, and Skills (DIUS), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Her Majesty's (HM) Treasury; and organizations working to support graduate employability in the United Kingdom, particularly the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

Education and the Process of Learning the Legitimate Socioeconomic Practice of a City Financial Elite
As I have documented elsewhere (Hall & Appleyard, 2009, ongoing postgraduate education for early-career fi nancial elites can be divided into three broad types, each of which is aimed at inculcating fi nanciers into a particular set of legitimated knowledge's that are deemed important in order to work within investment banking in the City of London. First, education plays an important role in circulating and legitimating the technical know-how or "calculative devices" (Callon & Muniesa, 2005 ) important within the increasingly technical nature of contemporary investment banking in the City. A second form of education focuses on the "psyknowledges" (Rose, 1998 ) deemed important within such labor markets and include topics such as leadership, while the third form of education concentrates on ensuring that early-career investment bankers meet the regulatory clearances required to offer investment advice in the United Kingdom. At one level, these types of postgraduate educational experience for early-career investment bankers support unquestioned assumptions about education's role in inculcating individuals into the dominant global discourses that surround fi nancial services (on which see Clark, 2011 ), particularly into its technical and quantitative nature, which has intensifi ed since the rise of securitization in the 2000s. As one interviewee noted in talking about a graduate training scheme undertaken with the other graduate recruits at the employing investment bank: At the beginning stage, it's the technical experience, the grounding that we do…it is very broad; it's quite theoretical as well. You don't get the experience of actually applying it. (Analyst, investment bank, London, June 2008) This refl ects changes to the investment banking business model associated with the rise of securitization and structured fi nance. The new approach shifted the emphasis away from the areas of mergers and acquisitions and consulting that until then had dominated investment banking in the City (see Augar, 2009 ), with the increasingly valued technical know-how and modeling skills supplanting the client services and client interactions previously so important in an era of " gentlemanly capitalism." However, within this education into the language of global fi nance (Clark, 2011 ) here was widespread recognition that education was much more important than simply facilitating the learning of the key tenets of quantitative fi nance. Rather-building here on my earlier discussion on education's role in reproducing legitimate forms of socioeconomic practice-it was widely acknowl-edged to be an important set of activities inculcating new-graduate hires into the meanings, cultures, and beliefs that legitimate certain forms of technical know-how. Indeed, one interviewee put it very strongly, arguing that the technical know-how of quantitative fi nance in isolation was "irrelevant to your career" ( Investment bank analyst, City of London, London, June 2008). This suggests that postgraduate education plays an important role in allowing new early-career elites to learn the cultural meanings surrounding the implementation of technical know-how in ways deemed legitimate and appropriate by colleagues, clients, and rival banks within the City of London. As the following interview summarized: You obviously need the theoretical background but something I've always experienced is that you have a theoretical background in something so principled, you then have the technical professional [knowledge] in a particular issue but it is almost impossible to remember that without the practical application as well. So I think they need to be very closely aligned and you can't really have one without the other-things that are really important in the workplace like presentation skills, soft skills, knowing how to approach a client and how to address them. ( Investment bank president, London, September 2006) Two elements of the way in which postgraduate education inculcates elites into the legitimated form of socioeconomic practice in the City are particularly important in this respect. First, education is essential in reproducing the discourse of client service that is a longstanding component of City-specifi c legitimate socioeconomic activity. This form of embodied know-how resonates in some ways with the emphasis on client service important in discourses of " gentlemanly capitalism" (see Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2000 ;Clark & O'Connor, 1997 ;Thrift, 1994 ). Evidence of this was frequently commented on, with the following example being indicative: I think in general, one of the biggest skill sets that's required is client facing skills. Just the ability to communicate clearly and concisely ( Investment bank vice president, London, October 2006). While socialization into client service is partially achieved through observing more senior colleagues, postgraduate education also plays an important part, with education providers devising innovative teaching techniques to facilitate this form of learning, often also including elements of observation. Of particular importance in this respect is the use of simulations, in which client-facing situations are enacted in the classroom using actors and fi nance fi rm senior employees. Education providers seek to offer participants opportunities to learn about the meanings and competencies associated with commercially sensitive client advice through a combination of observation (of both actors and more senior colleagues) and feedback provided after the simulation by the educators themselves and senior colleagues.
Postgraduate education is also important because it informs new recruits about legitimated meanings and competencies associated with City practice by inculcating them into specifi c organizational and corporate cultures referred to by Erica Schoenberger ( 1997 ) as the " social conventions" within fi rms. These include informal know-how about acceptable workplace behavior and shared interpretations of the regulatory norms of London's fi nancial district The importance of this aspect of education illustrates that despite the fi rms' broadly similar knowledge bases they seek as competitors to differentiate themselves by emphasizing how their ability to deliver what would be considered appropriate advice is infl uenced by strengths associated with particular, fi rm-specifi c cultures of practice. In fi nancial fi rms, compulsory courses for all new recruits are run in-house on a regular basis, sometimes by senior staff and sometimes by for-profi t education fi rms. This type of education is concerned with socializing individuals into the organizationally acceptable ways of using the standard technologies or "calculative devices" (Callon & Muniesa, 2005 ) underpinning most investment bank transactions. Here competency relates to knowledge about fi rm-specifi c parameters for the particular risk valuation techniques to be used (see Hall, 2008 ).
Such technology-specifi c education is supported by the wider socialization objectives of investment banks' induction programs targeting new-graduate recruits with the goal of informing individuals about how to fulfi ll the expectations of both the City fi eld and the fi rm's senior professionals in terms of everyday practice. The approach is described by the following interviewee: There is also quite a lot of time dedicated to them instilling and communicating the values of the company and what is going to be expected of people and giving guidance on the key values, what it means to be professional, what the standards are, and what you are expected to project on a day to day basis, so yes, quite a lot of time is spent on that in the beginning. I think people expect that. ( Investment bank vice-president, London, 2010) Taken together, these elements reveal how postgraduate education is crucial in inculcating new recruits in investment banks into the legitimated and expected forms of socioeconomic practice within these elite labor markets. In so doing, postgraduate education moves considerably beyond simply circulating and facilitating the reproduction of technical know-how within wholesale fi nancial workplaces in London's fi nancial district, to include a range of embodied and sociocultural forms of knowledge.

Societally and Territorially Embedding Early-Career Financial Elites Through Education
The analysis so far has revealed the central role of postgraduate education in providing new recruits with an understanding of the legitimate meanings, competencies, and technologies (and their use) associated with City practice. At fi rst glance, this analysis might be read as a story about the role of education in helping reproduce elites using practices attuned to the globally dominant discourses that shape the fi nancial services sector (on which see Clark, 2011 ). However, although the kinds of education experienced by early-career elites in the City allows some such attuning to global investment banking labor markets , education also acts in important ways to situate City elites in a London-specifi c mode of practice. These educational activities suggest that in addition to facilitating entry into the topological networks characteristic of fi nancial elites and elites more generally in a process well documented in the literature, postgraduate education also serves to societally and territorially embed fi nanciers, temporally at least, in particular national and city-specifi c international fi nancial districts. This involvement demonstrates how the topological and topographical are entwined within fi nancial elite labor markets, as well as the role of education within this. In the following, I draw attention to two ways in which postgraduate education serves to embed early-career fi nancial elites into the U.K. national economy and the City-specifi c international fi nancial district in London in particular: fi rst, briefl y, by examining the role of education in inculcating elites into the regulatory frameworks of London and the United Kingdom; and second, by examining the intersection of what remain predominately national education systems with the more transnational qualities of elite fi nancial labor markets.
Beginning with geographically specifi c fi nancial services regulatory frameworks, postgraduate education gained importance because it provided individuals the opportunity to study for the credentials needed to practice as a fi nancier and to offer investment advice in the City. At the time this chapter's research was undertaken, this meant being registered with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the United Kingdom, as the following interviewee summarized (for a fuller discussion of this element of postgraduate education geographies see Hall & Appleyard, 2009 ): The FSA exams basically mean I can work in the United Kingdom-if I work overseas then I'd have to go through a similar process-it's not necessarily a huge problem but it does mean for the moment I'm really a British banker and there would be some delay in terms of me generating revenue if I move to Dubai. ( Investment bank vice president, London, 2010) Beyond this regulatory element, the second way elite education served to embed fi nanciers into particular forms of practice and associated career pathways was through its relationship to the broader national education landscape in the United Kingdom. In this respect, although fi nancial labor markets are often assumed to be global in scope, a signifi cant proportion of new recruits to the City come from the United Kingdom. These individuals typically hold undergraduate degrees from either Oxbridge or the Russell Group, a collection of 24 of the most researchintensive and selective universities in the United Kingdom. This fact poses important questions about how a predominately national education system intersects with the more global nature of elite fi nancial labor markets and what the implications of this are for early-career fi nancial elites working in investment banking in London's fi nancial district. As Brown and Hesketh ( 2004 , p. 23) argue in regard to graduate labor markets more generally: Some occupational elites operate in a global rather than a local context, but they accumulate elite credentials and other cultural assets within national and local contexts. How domestic competitions are organized continue to be important to understanding the fates of the eventual winners and losers.
In the case of fi nance, one of the most distinctive features of the U.K. university system impacting how early-career elites enter fi nancial labor markets are the numeracy skills required by the increasingly technical nature of investment banking work. While earlier generations of investment bankers in the City held degrees in a diverse range of disciplines, throughout the 2000s the recruitment strategies of investment banks favored the hiring of individuals holding undergraduate-and increasingly master's and Ph.D-degrees in numerate subjects, notably mathematics and physics (Hall & Appleyard, 2009 ;Wilmott, 2000 ). This preference was driven by a growing need for numerate graduates to undertake the fi nancial modeling and analysis underpinning the securitized fi nancial products dominating the investment banking business model in the 2000s (see also Ho, 2009 on the case of Wall Street, New York). However, investment banks have become increasingly concerned about the skills of U.K. educated graduates and their ability to meet the operational needs of investment banks, refl ecting wider concerns surrounding the skill sets and employability of U.K. graduates, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM subjects, on which see CBI, 2011 ;DIUS, 2009 ). As the following interviewee summarized: I guess very generally there has been actually a problem with British students coming into banking. We fi nd that they are just not coming through the interview process or screening process and I think that's probably true across the board of most banks. (Human resources director, investment bank, London, September 2006) As a result, in an effort to enhance students' positional advantage within increasingly competitive fi nancial labor markets, postgraduate education for U.K. graduates entering fi nance increasingly concentrates on sharpening those numerical skills that employers feel undergraduate education has left underdeveloped, The nature of postgraduate education for investment bankers has become tailored to refl ect both the wider educational landscape of the United Kingdom in which it is situated and the labor market demands made of domestic and international new recruits into investment banking, as this example shows: Because we can't always get the technical skills we want domestically, increasingly we hire international graduates on that basis but then recognize that we might need to invest a little more in their soft skills and their expectations about working in the City. That's not to say we only hire internationally, not at all, but we know that the needs of analysts tends to be different depending on where they studied for their fi rst degree, so, we'll work with talented U.K. hires to develop their technical skills, using specialist courses and that kind of thing. (Human resources director, investment bank, London, 2009) In conjunction with education aimed at meeting the regulatory clearances needed to practice as a fi nancier, postgraduate education thus serves as an important set of activities not only by facilitating the mobility of individuals into elite fi nancial labor markets but also by serving to-temporarily at least-limit their mobility and territorially and to embed them societally in the legitimate forms of socioeconomic practice associated with the international fi nancial center where they work ( London's fi nancial district in the case of this chapter). Indeed, interviewees' frequently commented on the ways in which they had to use training and orientation sessions to learn about working in other fi nancial districts in order to overcome some of this geographical stickiness, as the following example demonstrates: After my initial training in New York, I was then sent on, I think, six rotations where I was working for a short period in different functions globally. It was all about learning through doing, getting a feel for the working culture, the hours, the dress, how you handle clients and of course colleagues. But that wasn't just in London even though that is where I work now. (Investment bank vice president, London, 2009) Taken together, this suggests that postgraduate education plays an important role in inculcating early-career fi nancial elites into the topological networks and the more topographical requirements of working in London's international fi nancial district. Indeed, these multiple spatitialities have become increasingly marked as elite fi nancial labor markets demand ever more quantitative skills from graduates, something that has not been a historic strength of the U.K. education system producing many of the early-career elites.

Conclusions
This chapter has taken the growing interest in economic elites as its starting point to examine the comparatively neglected role of postgraduate education in facilitating entry into and upward mobility within elite fi nancial labor markets in London's international fi nancial district, particularly in its investment banks. Much of the attention to date has emphasized the role of educational background at a small number of elite, fee-paying public schools and universities in the graduate recruitment process and the importance of the shared educational experience in the development of trust-based relationships between bankers and their historic regulator, the Bank of England, in the City of London (see Pryke, 1991 ). The research presented in this chapter builds on these insights to sharpen the focus on the signifi cance of ongoing education beyond the fi rst degree and second schooling in shaping the nature of socioeconomic practice in the City. In this regard, I have argued that training earlycareer elites in the technical know-how required to work in investment banks in London's contemporary international fi nancial district is only part of the function these forms of educational experiences fulfi ll. Rather, education within investment banks through graduate training schemes and that provided by specialist business education providers plays an important role in inculcating new investment bank employees into the expected and legitimated practices, meanings, competencies, and cultures associated with working in investment banking in the City of London.
The wider signifi cance of this chapter is twofold. First, theoretically, the analysis reveals the value of extending work on the sociology of education beyond the existing focus on the multiple forms of capital reproduced through educational background to include questions raised by Bourdieu's wider concepts of fi eld, habitus, and doxa. By examining what these concepts reveal about practice, this chapter has begun to develop a valuable approach for considering how education within elite occupations not only plays an important role for individuals in securing entry into labor markets , but also serves to (re)produce understandings of legitimated forms of practice. In particular, and in relation to the focus of this book more generally, such an understanding is important because it challenges assumptions that investment bankers are a globally mobile, homogeneous fi nancial class. Rather, education plays an important role in embedding (see Hess, 2004 ) them societally and territorially in the distinctive cultures of particular fi nancial centers at different points in their careers. This fi nding reinforces recent arguments in economic geography that the topological nature of fi nancial networks cannot be separated from the topographical dimensions of socioeconomic practice (see Pike & Pollard, 2010 ).
Second, empirically, by focusing on the educational experiences of early-career elites, the analysis here has revealed the need for work on corporate and industry cultures and practices to study more carefully on the role of postgraduate educational spaces in the (re)production of situated practices. This is important because the cultures of practice within elite work have been the subject of considerable media and popular debate concerning their continued exclusionary tendencies and the implications of this for the possible growth trajectories of the global economy following the fi nancial crisis (Cabinet Offi ce, 2009 ;Treasury Committee, 2010 ). In this respect, it would appear that claims of the end of " gentlemanly capitalism" has heralded a more meritocratic City where upward career progression is equally available to all recruits provided they invest appropriately in their human capital through further postgraduate education and training have been exaggerated. Rather, individuals are involved in obtaining training and using it strategically to enhance their employability and positional advantage relative to other early-career elites in what remain highly competitive elite labor markets . This suggests that further postgraduate education might represent an important site of intervention if political aims to alter the culture of the City and render it more meritocratic and sustainable in terms of its fi nancial practices are to be fully realized.