The stereotyping of white working-class youths in "hoodies" as feckless thugs creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that means many young men do not enter higher education or, if they do, do not complete their courses, according to research.
A two-year project at Staffordshire University was set up to discover why bright working-class young people are more likely than their middle-class peers to drop out of university.
The paper, Falling Down Ladders and Charming Snakes , is due for publication in September. Its authors wanted to bring balance to the debate about the behaviour of young males who wear hooded tops, or hoodies.
Lead researcher Jocey Quinn, who is now based in the School of Education at Exeter University, said the young white working-class male dropouts she interviewed were enthusiastic learners and caring and responsible.
But she said: "Hoodies are a cultural symbol, and it has come to represent these young working-class men. What we need to do as a society is look beneath the hood.
"If people really listened to them, they would find out what interests them. But we found out that people were pushing them into courses that did not particularly interest them. That is why so many of them drop out, and quite often they go back to what really interests them."
Dr Quinn said one student who gained a B in his A-level maths and wanted to carry on with the subject was told by his maths teacher that maths was for "clever people" and would not suit him.
He ended up on an engineering course at a further education college, began a university degree for which he was over-prepared, was bored and left the course.
Dr Quinn said: "The attitudes that we have towards them (working-class boys) and the pictures that are painted of them sets up an expectation that they are going to fail."