Same Folks, Different Strokes: Class, Culture, and the "New" Diversity at Elite Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Beginning in 1998, selective colleges began adopting no-loan admissions policies to increase socioeconomic diversity. These colleges, however, get their new diversity from old sources. I show how half of lower-income black undergraduates at elite colleges graduate from boarding, day, and preparatory schools like Exeter and Andover, those whom I call the Privileged Poor, while their peers enter from local, typically troubled public schools—those whom I call the Doubly Disadvantaged. My dissertation draws on in-depth interviews with 103 native-born black, Latino, and white undergraduates and two years of ethnographic observation at pseudonymous Renowned University to explore what Mitchell Stevens et al. (2008) call, “the experiential core of college life,” the often overlooked moments between college entry and exit when undergraduates employ different cultural competencies to navigate college and how university policies facilitate this process.

Each chapter examines moments of social contact: (1) micro-interactions between peers, (2) engagement between undergraduates and college officials, and (3) undergraduates’ experiences navigating university policies. I find that there are instances where lower social class status is oppressive, but also there are times when cultural resources serve as social buffer. I show that where the Privileged Poor and Doubly Disadvantaged’s experiences differ, disparate cultural endowments play a larger role in shaping undergraduates’ well-being. Where their experiences align, shared economic disadvantage is more salient. Equally important, I document not only how university practices can exacerbate preexisting inequalities, but also how their effects are unequally distributed.

Examining the experiences of those who travel different trajectories to college deepens our understanding of the reproduction of inequality in college.

Author

• Anthony Jack, Harvard University