In the fall of 2014, a 5-year study was conducted by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton, along with a team of researchers. They inserted themselves into a freshman dormitory with 53 women at a “high-profile Midwestern state school,” Indiana University. They were to examine the social lives of a group of female students from their undergraduate life into professional life. Initially, the project was to examine “sex and romance” in the collegiate community; however, was reconstructed to assess the “academic experience for women of both high and low socioeconomic status.” The observations showed that lively social life only benefits the upper-class. The “party pathway” built for these privileged college students is stirred up at the “campus party scene, the boozy, hook-up happy world of Greek life.” This experiment is conducted to see if college social life determines future success – can you climb the social class ladder if you don’t enter the party first? The study shows that the party life is designed to flaunt the affluent population of students, leaving the working-class students isolated. The study indicates that these parties correlate to power and elite status in the future, leaving the less-fortunate forever in the lower class while adding on four years of student-loan debt and few post-collegiate job opportunities. This paper will discuss the implications of this study with respect to socioeconomic status and social capital.
The study suggests that the students pick their majors depending on their family’s level of income. The party-goers aren’t academically-motivated so they pursue degrees that are easier (communications, sociology, psychology) than the working-class students who choose more time-consuming majors. Why should they work harder in school when their parents create opportunities for them? Their college careers simply depend on “an implicit agreement between the university and students to demand little of each other.” This allowed them to spend more time drinking than they would studying. Does this satisfy the common theory it’s not what you know, it’s who you know? In a world where nepotism gets you farther than stellar grades, it all comes down to the connections you make in school. You are more likely to get an interview if you know someone in the company prior, just as you are more likely to get into a party if you know the people throwing it. Partying in college is a social collateral, the affluent can afford to go to the parties because grades aren’t their top priority, while the students paying for school suffer socially if they don’t go and academically if they do. It puts the lower-class individuals at a disadvantage because the party-goers are associated with higher class individuals. They are missing out on networking opportunities that could come in handy in a future job interview. If it’s all about who you know, the only way to meet them in college is at a party.
This study showed that out of the 53 total students examined, 11.3% are in “working class” and 33.3% are jetsetters. They can’t afford to do poorly in school because it’s their only pathway to future success. As a result to the party distraction, most on the “mobility pathway” graduate after six years plus, drop out entirely, or go to another university where they are given a fair chance collectively. Over the 5-year period, none of the “working class” individuals graduated from the university. It was noted that many of them transferred out to a less prominent local branch campus (Grasgreen). Why would they want to stay in a school where they didn’t have the capital or resources to keep up with the social scene? This indicates that the playing field was unequal for each individual student in this university. The income level of someone’s family should not determine success in the university or future, but this study signifies that it does.
The inequality can be visualized in the Lorenz curve. When comparing the socialites, who thrive at parties, to the working-class students devoid of it, the Lorenz curve would be bent significantly far away from the 45-degree line indicating high inequality of distribution in family income, attendance at parties, and overall future success. If you think about it lower-class students can be compared to LDCs; however, LDCs have a high marginal productivity, so convergence is possible. In this case, convergence is highly unlikely because the lower-class students aren’t being accommodated by the university and most transfer out.
This problem was a consequence of a cut in federal higher education funds. The levels of students attending college has reached a high and government spending on higher education is at a low. “The Funding decline has contributed to higher tuition and reduced quality on campuses as colleges have had to balance budgets by reducing faculty, limiting course offerings…” (Mitchell, et. al). With these rising tuition costs, the financial student aid and student tax credits have not kept up. Because government spending decreased, the university had to look to upper-class students as the answer. This is where public universities start to accommodate the higher-class students, just as a private university would. This puts the working class at an advantage over the rich students who come to college to land high-paying jobs post-graduation.
There are many solutions that universities could do to change this outcome which includes to recruit more in-state individuals rather than out-of-state or international students who increase the demand for the “party pathway,” bring down the costs of tuition or increase the amount of available financial aid, limit the institutional ties to the university by Greek life and other social organizations, increase the advising and attention towards the “mobility pathway students,” or even increase the amount of Friday classes to deter the classic college night, Thirsty Thursday. These solutions are implausible because change needs to be made from the source –government higher education spending. Time will only tell if they will increase the accommodation to financially-dependent students or maybe they’ll just realize graduating from a state school isn’t a reality.
Citations
Grasgreen, Allie. “'Paying for the Party'.” Colleges with Party Emphasis Maintain Economic, Social Inequality, New Research Suggests, Inside Higher Ed, 1 Apr. 2013, www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/01/colleges-party-emphasis-maintain-economic-social-inequality-new-research-suggests.
Lewin, Tamar. “Class Warfare Along Partygoer Lines.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Aug. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/elizabeth-a-armstrong-on-her-book-paying-for-the-party.html.
Mitchell, Michael, et al. “State Cuts Have Driven Up Tuition and Reduced Quality.” A Lost Decade in Higher Education Funding, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 23 Aug. 2017, www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding.