Welcoming Blue-Collar Scholars Into the Ivory Tower: Developing Class Conscious Strategies for Student Success by Krista Soria (review)

This short and densely referenced book is packed with material on the importance of social class in the lives of working-class college students and includes research-based examples of how campus leaders can reduce the negative impact of the collegiate experience on working-class students. Author Krista Soria (2015) uses “the term working class as opposed to low income students, students living in poverty, or other terms that might reference only the students’ economic condition” (p. 2). Soria uses a data-based lens to explore issues related to blue-collar students, institutional policies, and institutional practices, and interpersonal interactions. The author’s reliance on research strengthens the argument that student social class is a problem beyond basic economics that can be managed solely with financial aid.

While similar in topic to Jeff Davis’s (2010) The First-Generation Student Experience, Rashne R. Jehangir’s (2010) Higher Education and First-generation Students,; Lee Ward, Michael J. Seigel, and Zebulun Davenport’s (2012) First-generation College Students, and Will Barratt’s (2011) Social Class on Campus, Soria focuses on the “What can we do?” question that is anchored in the research-based answers to the question “What are the critical issues?” By establishing the critical issues through a review of research literature, the reader is guided to learning about activities that have worked successfully with blue-collar students.

“The goals of this book are to raise attention to the experiences of working-class college students amid a critique of a greater social class(ed) structures of higher education that have historically marginalized students from such backgrounds” (Soria, 2015, p. 19). To have accomplished this goal in so few pages is praiseworthy. Awareness, knowledge, and skill are the trinity of diversity and Soria provides data to enhance the reader’s awareness and knowledge, and provides a review of successful programs to enhance the reader’s skill set.

In chapter 1, “Introduction,” Soria sets the stage by exploring the current definitions of blue-collar and working class students using both external metrics, such as income and educational attainment, and explores issues of personal working-class identity. The intersectionalities of ethnicity, gender, and class, while complex, are addressed in this chapter. The meritocratic myth, our shared United States narrative of upward mobility, is covered and provides a vivid background. It helps the reader understand the larger social context of the issues of working-class students on campus.

Chapter 2, “Theoretical Perspectives on Social Class in Higher Education,” provides the reader with a walk-through of Bourdieu’s ideas about class, which are both useful and research tested. For readers not familiar with social class theory, this chapter covers the basic language that helps to frame the experiences of students on campus and helps the reader to see beyond social class as purely economic. Bourdieu’s ideas of economic, cultural, and social capital map easily to current activities, or inactivity, of student and academic affairs professionals.

In “Access to Higher Education: Examining the Roots of Disparities in Attendance and Attainment,” chapter 3, Soria explores college access through multiple perspectives from financial to social, and ties this research together to frame issues of student success into a nuanced and complex light that is in keeping with the complex reality of the modern campus. The topic of access to college is complex and Soria explores the issues beyond the simple idea of lowered tuition. No exploration of the college experience would be complete without examining the in-class experience.

“Class in the Class(ed) Rooms,” chapter 4, builds on the previous chapters to examine the interaction between working-class students and faculty and peers in academic settings. Drawing on ideas like the “hidden curriculum” (p. 42), Soria cites research to examine the experiences of blue-collar and working-class students. In...