The Goods of the University: How Students From Low-Socioeconomic-Status Backgrounds Help Humanize Our Institutions

• In Event: Supporting First-Generation "At-Promise" Students From Low-Income Backgrounds

Abstract

Despite a litany of warnings of the ill-effects of neoliberalism, the primary outcomes of the university continue to be presented in terms of neoliberalism’s basic elements, most notably the concept of capital. Although capital aids a person’s ability to navigate and influence society, emphasizing capital alone obscures the human ends towards which the instrumentality of capital might be aimed. More human conceptualizations of students and their experiences are needed. In this qualitative study, we analyzed interviews with 28 undergraduate students from Low-SES backgrounds to uncover their critically distant perspective on the human goods of the university. Students emphasized four of the six basic goods described by Smith (2015)—namely, knowledge of reality, identity coherence, purposive agency, and social belonging.

Authors

• Theodore F Cockle, Baylor University
  Presenting Author

• Nathan F. Alleman, Baylor University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah E. Madsen, Baylor University
  Presenting Author

• Cara Cliburn Allen, Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition
  Presenting Author