Working With Working-Class College Students: Exploring the Predictors of Student-Faculty Interaction and Its Impact on Student Learning

• In Event: Sociocultural Influences on Learning, Leadership, and Friendships

Abstract

Informed by the student-impact literature and Bourdieu’s theories of capital, this study used structural equation modeling to explore the background characteristics and college experiences that portended to more student-faculty interaction among working-class college students and the role of such interactions in students’ cognitive skills development. Results from the sample of 30,000 poor and working-class college students attending 19 large public flagship institutions in the United States suggest that the frequency of student-faculty interaction differed by key student characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, and academic major. However, student-faculty interaction was a strong positive predictor of poor and working-class students’ self-rated cognitive skills, both directly, and indirectly via increased academic effort and more positive perceptions of campus racial climate.

Author

• Kaitlin N.S. Newhouse, North Carolina State University