With larger percentages of high school students entering higher education, it becomes increasingly important to look at how processes occurring on college campuses contribute to social stratification. Using in-depth interviews with 61 students, I ask: How does social class structure students' participation in the collegiate extra-curriculum? I argue that the collegiate extra-curriculum is an important site for stratification because it is there that students gain access to social and cultural resources valued by the privileged classes. I find that upper-middle-class students arrive on campus with cultural resources that motivate their participation and social resources that facilitate their involvement. Among working-class students, limited financial factors constrain their involvement, while social and cultural resources further curtail their interest in such activities. These findings contribute to theories of social and cultural reproduction by showing that those who have more valued social and cultural resources at the outset are in a better position to gain additional such resources throughout their college careers. Moreover, these analyses show that symbolic and cultural hierarchies are sustained by the interdependent relationship between social and cultural capital.

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Discourses of social class are an important object of study because how people talk about social class can translate into how they act on the basis of social class. Using data from sixty in-depth interviews with white college students from working- and upper-middle-class backgrounds at two institutions of higher education, I explore college students’ social class awareness, whether they think that social class matters, and how they construct symbolic boundaries. I find that whereas there are some similarities in how working- and upper-middle-class students talk about social class, differences ultimately emerge whereby working-class respondents construct social class as a more salient issue. Moreover, in contrast to earlier research, both upper-middle- and working-class students construct symbolic boundaries vis-à-vis those above them in the stratification system. This pattern suggests some possible implications for processes of social reproduction.

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This article explores gender and class exclusion among college students. The authors use qualitative data to explore how students talk about gender and class exclusion and quantitative data to model.patterns of exclusion within the Greek system. The Greek system serves as a site for social reproduction. Students constructed young women as elitist and prone to class exclusion, while typifying young men as unconcerned with such matters. Quantitative analyses complicate these findings. Within the Greek system, women are less exclusive than alleged and men more so. This discontinuity may reflect gender stereotypes and gender differences in the embodiment of social class. The authors argue that these patterns reinforce male privilege through the assertion that they are not engaged in social class exclusion while lacing undue blame on women as agents of class reproduction.