Good will hunting: social integration of students receiving forgivable loans for college education in contexts of high inequality

ABSTRACT

This article explores the black box of college adaptation and social integration of low SES students entering higher education under a forgivable loans program. It does so by studying a context of extreme educational and economic inequality. The magnitude of this study offers an unprecedented window to observe interactions between different social classes in college. Drawing on two different fieldworks, this study is based on 19 focal groups in 8 cities and 12 universities, and in an in-depth study of one elite university. Results show that low SES students actively mobilize different types of personal resources to integrate to the college environment, but they face strong objective and symbolic barriers. Results show also that regular students, on occasion, act as cultural guides for low SES students, helping them in the process of college adaption, and that colleges’ characteristics and diversity influence beneficiaries’ social integration and well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural capital
• agency
• social inequality
• social class
• student loans

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 These data belong to the Colombian National Planning Department and where collected by the authors of this article and other co-investigators to generate a baseline for the Ser Pilo Paga program (Alvarez-Rivadulla et al. 2017).

2 Proper names of institutions were erased and replaced by categories (e.g., [private university]). Other comments were also presented in brackets [].