Review of “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality”

Georgianna L. Martin   |    Volume Nine  |   

In Paying for the Party: How Colleges Maintain Inequality, authors Elizabeth Armstrong and Karen Hamilton argue the critical importance of the structure of both academic and social life in shaping students’ experiences during college and social class mobility, or the lack of, after college. As the authors indicate, they did not set out to study social class in college. Rather, their initial study was focused on the college environment as a platform for studying sexuality. As the study evolved, however, the authors realized that the social classed-nature of the experiences of students in their study (and consequently, higher education in general) was too pervasive to ignore.

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