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

• Published in: Social sciences (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 11; p. 500
• Main Author: Scherer, Mary L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2022
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Classrooms; College professors; College students; Colleges & universities; Context effects (Psychology); Cultural capital; Culture; Educational anthropology; Educational aspects; Habitus; Higher education; Individualism; Inequality; Institutional theory; Learning strategies; Middle class; Negotiation; Norms; organizational habitus; Psychological aspects; Regions; Social aspects; social class inequality; Social classes; Social norms; Social privilege; Social reproduction; Strategies; Student aspirations; Students; Working class; United States
• DOI: 10.3390/socsci11110500
• ISSN: 2076-0760

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.