Strategically Unequal: How Class, Culture, and Institutional Context Shape Academic Strategies

Abstract

When facing common setbacks like a missed due date or low assignment grade, some students take action to change the outcome while others do not. This study compares academic strategies by social class and across institutional context through interviews with working- and upper-middle-class students at a public regional and flagship university. Academic strategies are based on parentally-transmitted skills and knowledge as well as class-cultural norms of selfhood and the meaning of being a student. At the flagship, class-privileged students negotiated grades and deadlines using strategies rooted in a sense of entitlement and norms of individualism and self-exceptionalism, whereas working-class students’ norms of interdependence and compliance inhibited negotiation, reproducing existing inequalities. Institutional context mediated this effect: at the regional, both groups requested flexibility but did not (successfully) contest grades, minimizing class-privileged students’ advantage. Organizational habitus explains why academic strategies differed and were more or less likely to reproduce inequality at each university.

Introduction to the Special Issue—A Class of Our Own: Teaching Sociology by, for, and about First-Generation and Working-Class People

“…On campus, they may need to navigate class-cultural mismatch and a hidden curriculum, while off campus, they often face breakaway guilt with friends and family (Anyon 1983; Covarrubias and Fryberg 2015; Jack 2014; Lehmann 2021; London 1989; Rice et al 2017; Stephens et al 2012). These contexts shape the potential for and dynamics of social mobility through higher education for both students and faculty (Scherer 2022; Towers 2019).…”

“…Research reveals how faculty at teaching-intensive institutions with access-oriented missions come to identify with their FGWC students (Orphan and Broom 2021). Those of us teaching sociology in these contexts often have a wealth of pedagogical knowledge as we work closely with a high proportion of FGWC students in our access-oriented institutions (Gannon 2020; King and McPherson 2020; Scherer 2022). However, as the ASA Task Force report illustrated, instructors at teaching-intensive institutions, who are disproportionately from FGWC backgrounds themselves, often face the professional bind of having limited time, resources, or professional incentive to publish (Roscigno et al 2022; Vossen 2017).…”