Planning to Fail: The Symbolic Boundaries of Institutional Cultures in California Community Colleges

• In Event: 136 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 09. Class, Beliefs and Behavior on Campus

Abstract

The American Graduate Initiative (2009) added an additional 12 billion to community colleges with the intention of increasing student success. However this boost of funding has not necessarily resulted in the expected result. This study will assess the culture of institutions as creators of symbolic boundaries using the analytic frame of social reproduction. Using publicly available secondary data sources we first survey the educational environments, then use GLS regression to measure how institutions recreate boundaries that consistently exclude disadvantaged groups of students. The results indicate that boundary making is a characteristic of public community colleges. This in turn results in the maintenance of student failure by group membership.

Author

• Darby E. Southgate, Los Angeles Valley College