Social Class and Habitus at the End of College: Cultural Similarity and Difference among Graduating Seniors

ABSTRACT

Existing research offers a range of perspectives on the impact of the college experience on culture. While some scholars claim that higher education leads to cultural convergence or homogenization among students, others emphasize the durability of class-based cultural differences during college. This article seeks to understand the degree to which students from across class backgrounds leave college with a similar habitus. Drawing from interviews with 62 graduating seniors from three distinct class backgrounds, I examine cultural similarities and differences at two layers of habitus as students look toward life after college. Findings demonstrate that while students’ specific aspirations for graduate study and careers are similar, their general cultural schemas—evidenced by students’ perceptions of what constitutes success and failure after graduation—and sense of self diverge along class lines. In other words, these interviews provide evidence that college seniors across class backgrounds are comparable in their secondary habitus but differ at the level of their primary habitus. These findings have implications for the way we conceive of social mobility through higher education as well as our understanding of multiple layers of habitus.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers, as well as Josipa Roksa, Allison Pugh, Sabrina Pendergrass, Candace Miller, and Michael Fowler for their feedback and thoughtful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Because all participants come from the same cluster of majors, with students from across class backgrounds being evenly distributed in fields like music, biology, communication, English, sociology, and psychology, potential class-based differences in aspirations, schemas, and/or sense of self could be understood as products of differences in habitus rather than differences in the availability of post-college options for graduates in various fields.

² The names used in this article are pseudonyms to maintain students’ anonymity.

³ These messages were evident both within the institution studied and in U.S. culture more broadly. For example, the institution offered a variety of resources to prepare for employment through its career center and new student recruitment materials emphasized the high starting salary of graduates of the institution. Additionally, in the post-recession context, one did not have to look far to find anecdotes, media coverage, or academic research emphasizing the difficulty college graduates faced in finding work (e.g., Fogg and Harrington 2011; Hout 2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Blake R. Silver

Blake R. Silver is assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, where he also serves as director of data analytics and assessment in the Honors College. His research focuses on higher education, culture, and social stratification. Silver’s recent publications appear in the Review of Higher Education, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, and the Journal of College Student Development. He is the author of The Cost of Inclusion: How Student Conformity Leads to Inequality on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2020).