Are We Taught To Blame The Poor? The Effects of Higher Education on Attributions for Poverty

• In Event: 212 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. The View from the Top: Attitudes on Inequality Among the Wealthy or Highly Educated

Abstract

For several decades sociologist have questioned the impact of education on intergroup attitudes and beliefs about social inequality. Is education a source of “enlightenment” or a mechanism for the reproduction of inequality? Scholars have sought to answer this question by examining correlations between an individual’s level of education and his or her beliefs about gender, race, social stratification, and group-based policy interventions designed to reduce social inequality. By examining only the levels of education and not the specific content or type of education, this body of research has treated education as a homogenous influence. The present study demonstrates that there is no single uniform education that exerts a standard influence of students’ beliefs, even within a single university. Using original survey data collected from a sample of 764 students at one of the top Ivy League universities in the U.S., I find evidence consistent with a small overall liberalizing effect of an elite education on students’ beliefs about poverty. However, I also find that different patterns of coursework are associated with different beliefs; sociology and African American studies courses tend to increase structuralism and decrease individualism, while economics courses appear to have the reverse effect. And finally, an interaction between students’ race, sociology courses, and belief in structural causes of poverty suggests that even “liberalizing” courses have smaller effects on white versus non-white students.

Author

• Patricia Ann Homan, Duke University