Money Matters: How Social Class Shapes Students' Approaches to Financing Their Education

• In Event: Exploring the Intricacies of Financial Aid Policy: Aid Applications and Student Outcomes

Abstract

We examine how class-based differences in students’ interpretations of ‘money,’ broadly defined, influence how students finance college education. Through interviews with 65 community college students, we examine what money means to students, and how that varies across lower and higher income students, with implications for transfer decisions and outcomes. We use a broad cognitive approach to investigate the meaning of money, drawing on concepts from economic sociology and sensemaking theory to examine how students’ social class backgrounds shape their meaning-making and decisions around financing their education. How people understand money and work is shaped by culture, class background, and the meaning-making process, with important implications for students’ behaviors and decisions in college.

Authors

• Saralyn McKinnon-Crowley, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Huriya Jabbar, The University of Texas at Austin

• Lauren Schudde, The University of Texas at Austin

• Ashli Duncan, University of Texas at Austin

• Eliza Epstein, The University of Texas at Austin