Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility

Sociologist Osborne argues in her eye-opening debut study that programs at selective colleges meant to teach students from working-class backgrounds how to network, dress professionally, and otherwise acquire the social capital required to succeed in an elite environment, rather than helping students adjust to campus life, instead supercharge conflict with their families and friends back home. Drawing on interviews with 150 students at elite schools, Osborne describes harrowing scenes: while home on break, one student was accused of being a “fancy motherfucker” by his father, who claimed “the way he was wearing his hat, the ‘proper’ way he was talking, and the amount of gesturing he was doing with his hands” were signs of how college had changed him. Another student got into screaming matches with her mother, who called her a “stuck-up bitch,” before eventually breaking off contact. Such discord left many of the students feeling adrift (“I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere”) and at risk of forgetting “where they came from.” The extensive quotations are heartbreaking, allowing students to express in their own words the heavy toll that attending selective colleges exacts on their lives outside the classroom. It’s a searching inquiry into how elite colleges are failing their working-class students. (May)