Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality - Softcover

Elizabeth A. Armstrong; Laura T. Hamilton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674088026 ISBN 13: 9780674088023

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Two young women, dormitory mates, embark on their education at a big state university. Five years later, one is earning a good salary at a prestigious accounting firm. With no loans to repay, she lives in a fashionable apartment with her fiance. The other woman, saddled with burdensome debt and a low GPA, is still struggling to finish her degree in tourism. In an era of skyrocketing tuition and mounting concern over whether college is "worth it," Paying for the Party is an indispensable contribution to the dialogue assessing the state of American higher education. A powerful expose of unmet obligations and misplaced priorities, it explains in vivid detail why so many leave college with so little to show for it. Drawing on findings from a five-year interview study, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton bring us to the campus of "MU," a flagship Midwestern public university, where we follow a group of women drawn into a culture of status seeking and sororities. Mapping different pathways available to MU students, the authors demonstrate that the most well-resourced and seductive route is a "party pathway" anchored in the Greek system and facilitated by the administration. This pathway exerts influence over the academic and social experiences of all students, and while it benefits the affluent and well-connected, Armstrong and Hamilton make clear how it seriously disadvantages the majority. Eye-opening and provocative, Paying for the Party reveals how outcomes can differ so dramatically for those whom universities enroll.

About this title

Review:

"With astute observations and insights, "Paying for the Party "sheds new light on the lived experiences of contemporary students. It is a very important piece of scholarship that will inform the national discourse on the current state of U.S. higher education." --Richard Arum, author of Academically Adrift

"In this bold book, Armstrong and Hamilton capture the strikingly different pathways women undergraduates can take through public universities--'party,' 'professional,' or 'mobility'--and show how the dominant campus culture indulges the upper-middle class and limits the prospect of the upwardly mobile. The authors show the complex connections between parental resources, sociability, educational outcome, post-graduation lives, and the importance of the right brand of shoes. This book illuminates the realities of the college experience today, when an adult life without crushing debt is fast becoming the privilege of the few." --Michèle Lamont, author of How Professors Think

About the Author:

Elizabeth A. Armstrong is Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizational Studies at University of Michigan. Laura T. Hamilton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0674088026
• ISBN 13: 9780674088023
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344