Will
Barratt, Ph.D.
NASPA
Net Results (2007)
Social class gets little attention as a diversity issue on
campus yet is often at the center of many current campus issues. The Spellings
Report (Commission on the Future of Higher Education, 2006) and Lumina
Foundation (2007) concerns with student access and academic success are at
their core class issues. First generation students and millennial students on
campus present class issues. Student involvement and student leadership are
class issues. Yet access, success, students, involvement, and leadership are
not discussed as they relate to class issues.
One barrier to talking about class on campus is that we
don’t have the language to talk about it. Developing a language to talk about
class is the first step along the path to awareness, knowledge, and skill. Another
barrier to talking about class is that it makes people uncomfortable and raises
many objections. Cline (2007) has a nice collection of “25 things you will hear
if you try to talk about class”. “A Touchy Subject” is the name of the first
chapter in Class by Fussell (1983).
Class
as Capital
There are multiple metaphors of class that come to us from
economics, sociology, and psychology. Class as economic capital is the classic
metaphor. Using this definition class is seen as money, and the issues of class
are economic, the barriers to class movement are economic and the interventions
are economic. Money is an incomplete metaphor for class.
Pierre Bourdieu (1983) in The forms of
capital expanded the discussion of capital to include economic capital,
social capital, and cultural capital. Social capital, also used by the World Bank, was best captured
by Cuyjet (2002) as “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you”. Social capital
is a durable social network, and this takes time and skill to build. Cultural
capital is knowledge, skills, objects, and educational attainment, and these
take time and skill to accumulate. I add academic capital to these three forms
of capital, and capital becomes a richer metaphor for class on campus. Academic
capital is the knowledge base and skill set necessary to be successful in
school, and it takes time and skill to accumulate.
First generation students’ access and academic success can
be seen as more than money issues when we use this richer metaphor for class as
capital. First generation students have less economic, social, cultural, and
academic capital than do second generation students. When we use this metaphor,
class barriers and remedial actions can be seen more clearly. The accumulation
of capital begins at home, and first generation students come from low capital
homes.
To complicate this capital metaphor one important step
further, we must include the idea of prestige, which is at the heart of social
class. There is high prestige cultural and social capital and low prestige
social and cultural capital. First generation students may come to campus with low
prestige cultural capital that is not valued by the prestige class on campus.
Similarly, first generation students may not accumulate social capital with
members of the prestige groups on campus and rely on the social capital from
High School friends on campus.
Class
as Identity
Another metaphor for class is identity. At an early age we
all develop a gender identity, an ethnic identity, a social class identity, and
other identities. We learn who and what we are, and who and what we are not.
While gender and ethnic identity may shift in time to more mature models,
social class identity can be more complicated. Seen complexly social class
identity has three parts; we all have a social class of origin, a current felt
social class, and an attributed social class. A shift in attributed social
class may or may not correspond to a shift in current felt social class
identity.
For example, Jane is a first-generation student who succeeds
in accumulating economic capital, prestige cultural capital, prestige social
capital, and academic capital on campus. This wealth will not change her social
class of origin, may or may not change her current felt social class, and will
definitely change her attributed social class. On coming to campus, especially
a selective campus, a first generation student experiences high social class
contrast between campus social class culture and the student’s social class of
origin. If she is successful on campus through the process of acculturation and
assimilation, then her social class contrast on campus is reduced. Concurrently,
her experience of social class contrast at home may become an important issue
as she assimilates into a higher social class campus culture. Social class
contrast is similar to gender and ethnic contrast and may be part of the reason
that first generation students fail to persist on a campus.
Changing current felt social class means becoming a
different identity, something we learned that we were not during our identity
development. Changing to a more mature model of masculinity does not change
Ahmed’s basic gender identity. Changing between social classes can be
disintegrative when Ahmed moves away from his social class of origin identity
by aligning his current felt social class and attributed social class. Changing
social class can be integrative when Ahmed embraces multiple social class
identities retaining his social class of origin, developing a new current felt
social class, and recognizing his attributed social class.
Class
as Culture
Social class can be seen as a collection of subcultures
arranged in a hierarchy of prestige. This class metaphor includes multiple
forms of capital and, multiple identities, and it provides for a cultural view
of class in which the barriers are economic, cultural, social, academic, and
identity. Using a “yes, and . . . “ metaphor of class leads to social justices for
class inequity that are cultural, social, academic, and identity based, not
just money based.
When we use a culture and identity metaphor for class, then
each campus has a social class culture. A social class cultural analysis of the
campus majority culture yields productive ways to explore the experiences of
social class minority students and to discover appropriate interventions.
Using
the Language of Social Class
Applying this language of class to college access, to first
generation students, to millennial students, to student involvement, to
leadership, to campus programming gives us insight into what we do and what we
don’t do on campus. The ideal student has the resources to purchase recommended
readings in class and the time to be involved in organizations and activities.
The real student may be employed 20 hours a week to pay for tuition. The ideal
student knows something about the world so when the residence hall association
constitution gets written, the student knows how constitutions work. The real
student may not have been involved in high school or know about these types of
organizations. The ideal student has good social skills and can make connections
to the right people, quickly becoming involved. The real student may have
limited social skills and a circle of friends from high school only. The ideal
student can read well, write well, study effectively, and think critically. The
real student may not have gone to a high school with a strong emphasis on
college preparation.
The accumulation of economic, cultural, social, and academic
capital begins at home and is fostered in elementary and secondary schools.
Some students come to campus wealthy, and some do not. Economically,
culturally, socially, and academically wealthy students will do better on our
campuses than will lower class students.
Access to post secondary education should be seen as more
than an economic capital issue. Barriers to access and success are economic,
and cultural, and social, and academic, and identity. First generation students
come to campus with little cultural capital about how colleges work and few
social skills to develop social capital with prestige people who have resources.
Millennial students, as they have been described, come to campus with economic,
cultural, social, and academic capital. While this may describe students on
many campuses, it does not describe the first generation students on my campus.
Student involvement, so crucial on campus, requires social
capital and the skills to build social relationships with people who have
resources. Student leadership positions go to the students who come to campus
with student leadership experience capital that they accumulated at home, in
clubs and organizations, and in school before they came to campus. Students
whose parents went to college are more likely to know about and use resources
on campus.
Campus
as a Classing Experience
In The forms of
capital (1983) Bourdieu described how higher education in France is a
vehicle to reproduce social class. Highly selective campuses in the US reproduce
social class by admitting mostly students who have more economic, cultural,
social, and academic capital. “The relationship between income and selectivity
is clear and consistent” (Postsecondary Education Opportunity, 2002).
We also have social class access institutions in the US . My campus
has 60% first generation students, more than twice the percentage of the
prestige institutions in my state. Community colleges play an access roll by
providing the first two undergraduate years and they play a role in reproducing
social class by providing skills training for the working classes. The transfer
rates from community colleges to four year institutions are interesting when
viewed through a social class lens.
As might be expected, some campuses do well and others do
poorly with students from the lower social classes (Pell Institute, 2004). A
discussion of these issues in student affairs has been lacking and is necessary
for us to better serve all the students on our campus. Language is an important
part of our beginning this discussion. Using the language discussed here, as
well as the more complex understandings of class can guide the discussion and
help us identify campus-based challenges and supports for all students.
References
Bourdieu, P.
(1986). The forms of capital. Pp.
241-258 in Handbook of Theory and
Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. Richardson. Westport , CT : Greenwood Press.
Cline, C. (n.d.).
25 things you will hear if you try to
talk about class. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://www.steamiron.com/payday/class-20.html
Commission on the Future of Higher
Education. (2006). A test of leadership: Charting the future of U.S. Washington DC : U.S.
Department of Education.
Cuyjet, M.
(2002). Personal communication
Fussel, P. (1983)
Class: A guide through the American
status system. New York :
Touchstone
Lumnia Foundation. (2007). About Us.
Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://www.luminafoundation.org/about_us/index.html
Pell Instutute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, (2004). Raising the graduation
rates of low-income college students. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from http://www.pellinstitute.org/gradrates/Pell_Web.pdf
Postsecondary Education Opportunity, (2002).
Institutional Graduation Rates by Control, Academic Selectivity and Degree
Level 1983 to 2001, Postsecondary Education OPPORTUNITY
Number 117, March 2002.
This material first appeared in NASPA NetResults in 2007 and I used to host a copy on my campus web site, which is now gone, and NASPA archives require a password.
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