Inequality of Access, Opportunity, and Outcome: Research on the Working Classes and Higher Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session presents the work of authors contributing to an edited volume examining issues surrounding working-class and first-generation college students. The authors draw from diverse theoretical perspectives and renewed considerations of the working-class experience in higher education during times of great uncertainty. Despite pervasive public discourse of “college for all” as well as recent evidence of increasing access to, and enrollment in, higher education for working class students, the system also shows increasing signs of stratification and forms of exclusion (Shavit, Arum, & Gamoran 2007). This session, through diverse and nuanced perspectives, collectively examines experiences and concerns beyond the popular notion of access to higher education as a means to social mobility and equality of opportunity for working-class students.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Sociology of Education

Chair

• Amy Elizabeth Stich, Northern Illinois University

Papers

• Conferring Selective Excellence? Tracking Within a "Working-Class" College - Amy Elizabeth Stich, Northern Illinois University

• Normative Institutional Arrangements and the Mobility Pathway: How Campus-Level Forces Impact First-Generation Students - Jenny Stuber, University of North Florida

• Moving Beyond Access: Class and College Outcomes - Allison Hurst, Furman University

• Bewilderment and Betrayal in the Age of College for All - Jennifer M. Silva, Harvard University

• The Experience: First-Generation Female College Student Identity - Carrie Freie, The Pennsylvania State University - Altoona

Discussant

• Lois Weis, University at Buffalo - SUNY