Historically, higher education was designed for a narrow pool of privileged students. Despite national, state and institutional policies developed over time to improve access, higher education has only lately begun to address how its unexamined assumptions, practices and climate create barriers for poor and working class populations and lead to significant disparities in degree completion across social classes.The data shows that higher education substantially fails to provide poor and working class students with the necessary support to achieve the social mobility and success comparable to the attainments of their middle and upper class peers. This book presents a comprehensive range of strategies that provide the fundamental supports that poor and working-class students need to succeed while at the same time dismantling the inequitable barriers that make college difficult to navigate.Drawing on the concept of the student-ready college, and on emerging research and practices that colleges and universities can use to explore campus-specific social class issues and identify barriers, this book provides examples of support programs and services across the field of higher education – at both two- and four-year, public and private institutions – that cover:·Access supports. Examples and recommendations for how institutions can assist students as they make decisions about applications and admission.·Basic needs supports. Covering housing and food security, necessary clothing, sense of belonging through co-curricular engagement, and mental health resources.·Academic and learning supports. Describes courses and academic programs to promote full engagement among poor and working class students.·Advising supports. Illustrates advising that acknowledges poor and working class students’ identities, and recommends continued training for both staff and faculty advisors.·Supports for specific populations at the intersection of social class with other identities, such as Students of Color, foster youth, LGBTQ, and doctoral students.·Gaining support through external partnerships with social services, business entities, and fundraising.This book is addressed to administrators, educators and student affairs personnel, urging them to make the institutional commitment to enhance the college experience for poor and working class students who not only represent a substantial proportion of college students today, but constitute a significant future demographic.

Social Class and Classism in the Helping Professions is a supplementary text that is intended for courses in multicultural counseling/prejudice, which is found in departments of counseling, psychology, social work, sociology and human services. The book addresses a topic that is highly relevant in working with minority clients, yet has not received adequate treatment in many core textbooks in this arena. This book provides a thorough overview of mental health and social class and how social class and classism affect mental health and seeking treatment. Social class and classism cut across all racial and ethnic minority groups and is thus an important factor that needs to be highly considered when working withádiverse clients. The book examines the differences among poverty, classism and inequality and how it affects development across the life span (from infancy through the elder years). Most importantly, the book offers concrete, practical recommendations for counselors, students, and trainees.

"Drawing on the concept of the student-ready college, and on emerging research and practices that colleges and universities can use to explore campus-specific social class issues and identify barriers, this book provides examples of support programs and services across the field of higher education - at both two- and four-year, public and private institutions - that cover access supports, basic needs supports, academic and learning supports, advising supports, Supports for specific populations at the intersection of social class with other identities, and gaining support through external partnerships with social services, business entities, and fundraising"--

Class differences permeate the neighborhoods, classrooms, and workplaces where we lead our daily lives. But little is known about how class really works, and its importance is often downplayed or denied. In this important new volume, leading sociologists systematically examine how social class operates in the United States today. Social Class argues against the view that we are becoming a classless society. The authors show instead the decisive ways social class matters—from how long people live, to how they raise their children, to how they vote. The distinguished contributors to Social Class examine how class works in a variety of domains including politics, health, education, gender, and the family. Michael Hout shows that class membership remains an integral part of identity in the U.S.—in two large national surveys, over 97 percent of Americans, when prompted, identify themselves with a particular class. Dalton Conley identifies an intangible but crucial source of class difference that he calls the "opportunity horizon"—children form aspirations based on what they have seen is possible. The best predictor of earning a college degree isn't race, income, or even parental occupation—it is, rather, the level of education that one's parents achieved. Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger find that parental involvement in the college application process, which significantly contributes to student success, is overwhelmingly a middle-class phenomenon. David Grusky and Kim Weeden introduce a new model for measuring inequality that allows researchers to assess not just the extent of inequality, but also whether it is taking on a more polarized, class-based form. John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson examine the academic careers of students in three social classes and find that poorly performing students from high-status families do much better in many instances than talented students from less-advantaged families. Erik Olin Wright critically assesses the emphasis on individual life chances in many studies of class and calls for a more structural conception of class. In an epilogue, journalists Ray Suarez, Janny Scott, and Roger Hodge reflect on the media's failure to report hardening class lines in the United States, even when images on the nightly news—such as those involving health, crime, or immigration—are profoundly shaped by issues of class. Until now, class scholarship has been highly specialized, with researchers working on only one part of a larger puzzle. Social Class gathers the most current research in one volume, and persuasively illustrates that class remains a powerful force in American society.

A fresh take on social class from the experts behind the BBC's 'Great British Class Survey'. Why does social class matter more than ever in Britain today? How has the meaning of class changed? What does this mean for social mobility and inequality? In this book Mike Savage and the team of sociologists responsible for the Great British Class Survey look beyond the labels to explore how and why our society is changing and what this means for the people who find themselves in the margins as well as in the centre. Their new conceptualization of class is based on the distribution of three kinds of capital - economic (inequalities in income and wealth), social (the different kinds of people we know) and cultural (the ways in which our leisure and cultural preferences are exclusive) - and provides incontrovertible evidence that class is as powerful and relevant today as it's ever been.

Mapping the class divisions that run throughout Europe Over the last ten years - especially with the 'no' votes in the French and Dutch referendums in 2010, and the victory for Brexit in 2016 - the issue of Europe has been placed at the centre of major political conflicts. Each of these crises has revealed profound splits in society, which are represented in terms of an opposition between those countries on the losing and those on the winning sides of globalisation. Inequalities beyond those between nations are critically absent from the debate. Based on major European statistical surveys, the new research in this work presents a map of social classes inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. It reveals the common features of the working class, the intermediate class and the privileged class in Europe. National features combine with social inequalities, through an account of the social distance between specific groups in nations in the North and in the countries of the South and East of Europe. The book ends with a reflection on the conditions that would be required for the emergence of a Europe-wide social movement.

Why do we feel uncomfortable talking about class? Why is it taboo? Why do people often address class through coded terminology like trashy, classy, and snobby? How does discriminatory language, or how do conscious or unconscious derogatory attitudes, or the anticipation of such behaviors, impact those from poor and working class backgrounds when they straddle class? Through 26 narratives of individuals from poor and working class backgrounds – ranging from students, to multiple levels of administrators and faculty, both tenured and non-tenured – this book provides a vivid understanding of how people can experience and straddle class in the middle, upper, or even elitist class contexts of the academy.Through the powerful stories of individuals who hold many different identities--and naming a range of ways they identify in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and religion, among others--this book shows how social class identity and classism impact people's experience in higher education and why we should focus more attention on this dimension of identity. The book opens by setting the foundation by examining definitions of class, discussing its impact on identity, and summarizing the literature on class and what it can tell us about the complexities of class identity, its fluidity, sometimes performative nature, and the sense of dissonance it can provoke.This book brings social class identity to the forefront of our consciousness, conversations, and behaviors and compels those in the academy to recognize classism and reimagine higher education to welcome and support those from poor and working class backgrounds. Its concluding chapter proposes means for both increasing social class consciousness and social class inclusivity in the academy. It is a compelling read for everyone in the academy, not least for those from poor or working class backgrounds who will find validation and recognition and draw strength from its vivid stories.