Paradoxes of inclusion: student experiences in competitive higher education

Universities increasingly promote inclusive values, yet students report belonging and exclusion at once. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 students at a Singapore university, this qualitative study examines how inclusion and exclusion unfold across the individual, relational, pedagogical, and structural dimensions of university life. The analysis surfaces three paradoxes: community forms through the very competition that undermines it; recognition depends on a visibility that exposes students to harm; and the resourcefulness that enables inclusion is prompted by the institution’s failure to provide it. Rather than dilemmas solvable through better practice, these are structural paradoxes. Belonging and exclusion stem from the same institutional arrangements that promise inclusion while sorting students competitively. Together these paradoxes reveal a common logic: the work of inclusion is displaced onto the students it is meant to serve. Meaningful inclusion must therefore operate not only in the classroom but at the institutional level that determines which relationships become possible.