This comparative European study of the political economy of university student experience is exactly the sort of study needed to deepen and extend previous more general, global and distant analysis of crisis in the graduate labour market (see Brown, Reference Brown2004; Brown et al., Reference Brown, Lauder and Ashton2011). It tells the story of profound shifts in the role higher education (HE) plays sifting occupational hierarchies from the ground up, from the points of view of those undergoing these shifts.

The book is important because it reveals the commonality of working-class student experiences of ‘a materially disadvantaged experience of HE’ whether that be in Middlesbrough or Naples. These experiences though are beginning to extend to more traditional middle-class students too, as support more generally is withdrawn (from the ‘squeezed middle’). Moreover, mass higher education systems in Europe, as Antonucci shows, are no substitute for effective welfare, education and training systems for all young people. We can see here too parallels with Jennifer Silva's (Reference Silva2013) study of what it means to grow up as a young, working-class adult today in America. The chronic insecurities and risks shouldered by the young men and women she spoke to had resulted from the disappearance of the solidarities and resources that were once a feature of working-class life. She implies, as Antonucci shows, that this sense of anxiety and isolation has extended to groups beyond Silva's ‘forgotten half’ of working-class young people who do not attend college or university after secondary school in the US, UK and Europe. Individuals attending university belonging to seemingly more ‘successful’ groups are themselves highly stratified according to their class positions and experiences. Here age as well as class designates youth and young adult transitions as increasingly extended and precarious.

If, as Antonucci claims, ‘that transitions through university tend paradoxically to enhance, rather than limit, existing social inequalities’ (p 1), then government and official shibboleths that higher education is the main route to ‘social mobility’, economic growth and a ‘knowledge economy’ seem empty. Antonucci cogently argues and evidences that equal access to university is not enough when students are denuded of public welfare, as opposed to private family and jobs, as sources of support, just as they are denied the prosperity that graduate jobs should bring.

The underpinning research for these and other claims rests on an online survey and interviews with 84 students from six cities in England, Italy and Sweden about their material conditions, how they lived and their future wellbeing, as well as their experiences of HE. The different ‘welfare mixes’ of public and private support in each country were found to be accessed by research participants according to their social class and educational background. This is particularly important because a lot more working-class young people now go to university than is conventionally thought. For these students however, their university transitions are far from being linear and smooth, and the mere fact of attending offers few guarantees of equal access to graduate jobs, while often burdening them with debt.

The book is extremely well written and is structured so that Part 1 provides the context of the mass expansion of the university experience and discusses privatising the costs, while Part 2 presents the realities of students’ university lives. Finally, Part 3 explores the role played by the different sources of state welfare, family and job support, and the unequal distribution of this support across the three countries. The first Part shows, against orthodox views of university being an undifferentiated ‘good’ that equalises and extends life chances, how university shapes and reinforces inequality among young people from different backgrounds. The book shows that these are not only questions of access and job destination, but of what young people do once they are in university. In particular how different welfare, labour market and financial support for young people in university and systems of student support across Europe are crucial determinants of inequality among European young people in university. The primary way the author demonstrates this is through the creation of different profiles of young people's experiences in university in respect of finance, housing, wellbeing and education. These better or worse experiences are all defining of a crisis in student lives for many.

How inequality works in practice depended on the class and welfare mixes of countries and types of individual profiles: ‘struggling and hopeless’; ‘facing difficulties, but with hope for the future’; ‘a positive but temporary period’ and so on. These were connected to whether young people were in need of additional resources; had benefitted from state support; were with temporary family support; or indeed, had abundant family sources of support and no need to work. All these profiles were strongly class-based and varied across national differences. They also reflected the differences between countries in the mix of welfare and other sources of support. A key finding from the study is that there is a crucial role played by family support and a profound mismatch between what is demanded from families and what families can effectively afford to give to the young people (especially in England).

Students’ different labour market participation in precarious work, including those who needn't have worked but sought financial independence, and their reliance on a mix of state and family sources of support, present different sorts of problems and opportunities. All, however, point to the important function welfare states have in shaping young people's lives at university in terms of dependence and independence, and the role of family sources in compensating for declining welfare state interventions for students.