Many view populist tendencies among youth with concern because adolescence is a formative period for political development. Of the many factors that shape young people's populist attitudes, experiences in school deserve attention since young people spend time in educational settings and schools share the goal of educating students to become…

First-generation students often feel alone on college campuses. These students can find themselves excluded from organizations, traditions, and spaces that require financial, social, and cultural capital they may not have. In my Sociology of Work course, I use a family work history project to center and validate their experiences. Using census…

With ongoing racial tensions, terms such as antiracism and diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) are buzzwords on campuses across the United States. Yet resources, especially in management education, to teach privilege and intersectionality are limited. This article introduces four reflection exercises I have found valuable in facilitating students'…

This chapter outlines the concepts of social class privilege, highlights the experiences of students navigating social class, and examines the role of code-switching as a strategy to navigate higher education.

Entertainment media and popular culture often overdramatize the college experience. An honors colloquium engages students in scholarly research and discourse involving thematic elements of academic life in popular culture. An interdisciplinary approach to race, class, the professoriate, Greek life, and foreign experience is espoused. Through a…

In this chapter, we discuss microaggressions, or the everyday (and often unintended) incidents of discrimination that individuals from marginalized or underserved groups experience on college campuses as they relate to students' social class identities--or simply, class-based prejudices.

In the U.K., 'student engagement', and the related 'student experience', are increasingly measured, interpreted and then marketed to students as a basis on which to choose the 'best' place for their higher education. This article summarises and reflects on presentations from five panel members at a conference on their experience of university life…

Children and youth who experience low-income and economic marginalization (LIEM) suffer inequities in education, healthcare, housing, and postsecondary outcomes. LIEM is a broad conceptualization of poverty that incorporates many aspects of what it means to be economically oppressed, including access to limited financial resources and…

In 2012 Spain inaugurated a reform of its higher education financial aid system inspired by three principles: cost-sharing, increasing academic performance and school efficiency. This reform has shifted the aim of the system from equality of access to a type of meritocracy that can be defined as class-biased, as it is only applied to low-income…

Academic communities must learn to address many of the social divisions, misunderstandings, and inequities of society as a whole. Although challenging, this offers tremendous opportunities for educators to develop, study, and learn from innovative programs that respond effectively to these social issues on college and university campuses. This…

This article contributes to one's historical understanding of student experience in general, and more particularly, to one's understanding of developing cross-group relationships within desegregated schools over the second half of the twentieth century. The article draws from a broader study that examines students' evolving relationships within a…

Like many elite colleges and universities, Amherst College is going to great lengths and expense to identify and attract to its campus talented students who are not affluent and white. Its efforts are directed at offering opportunities for social and economic mobility to those students, at providing some measure of social equity. Bringing a…

While college is perceived as a given for many middle- and upper-income students graduating from high school, the transition from secondary to higher education is a much more complicated one for low-income students, particularly poor and working-class students of color. This article focuses on the critical juncture--one that is under-explored in…

A group of science students self-identifying as gay or queer have only talked of their sexuality and gender feelings, and their experiences within higher education, on the completion of their studies. The reasons for their alienation from, and further marginalisation by the queer discourse are discussed. These include the stereotyping of gay…

This paper focuses on a cohort of B.Ed. students' understandings about social difference and social justice as recorded in their professional journals in the first semester of third year. It shows that their reasons for choosing teaching as a career, reflections on their school experiences and discussions about future students are grounded in the…