Strategically Unequal: How Class, Culture, and Institutional Context Shape Academic Strategies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper was exceedingly well done.  The focus on two moderately selective universities with somewhat different cultures was somewhat original, and it was really interesting to see how class differences were different in different organizational contexts.  I am not normally as positive as my ratings above suggest, but I thought your paper merited the high ratings. The only rating I would qualify was checking the English language and style are fine/minor spell check required item. Although there were a handful of editing issues (e.g., not have a citation in a sentence in parentheses), I did not detect spelling problems.  But that was the only positive option available in the English Language and Style section.  Sorry.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, 

Thank you very much for your gracious review of my manuscript. I have made minor revisions in response to other reviewers' feedback and edited the writing for greater precision and clearer organization in several places. However, the substance of the article remains intact, and I look forward to moving it along to publication with your support. 

Sincerely, 

Author

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well-conceptualized and well-written article on the important topic of how organizational conditions in different types of higher education institutions might reduce or perpetuate undergraduates’ social class differences. Looking at social class-related academic behaviors at non-elite institutions is a clever and useful approach. The paper is publishable, in my view, with some relatively minor revisions. It is important to note that the tables were missing from the copy I reviewed. Some of my questions and concerns were probably addressed by the data presented in the tables.

 

I urge the author(s) to do the following:

 

• Revise the prose to caution the reader that the findings of this qualitative investigation cannot be generalized to all students at the two focal institutions and certainly not beyond the two study settings. Nor does this study design support any claim of causality. It is not warranted to conclude that organizational conditions that appear to confer greater degree of similarity in academic strategies among students from different class backgrounds result in “reduc[ing] inequality.” This is a whopping claim that might or might not be true. Establishing the degree to which the claim is justified requires pathways that need to be theorized, connected to other factors in the literature, and studied in further research.
• Discuss implications for practice and further research (including testing the generalizability and causal relationships suggested in this study).
• Include more recent citations and updated citations, especially for your central factor of outcomes for low-income students at different kinds of institutions. Update the literature in general, for example, cite Anthony Jack’s book instead of his initial article and Streib et al. in addition to McDonough, and—at the least—update demographic information or be clear that your stats pertain to the period of this study.
• Frame your definition of “working class” within the literature. There is little agreement on this term. “Low-income” is the more common term in higher education. Whether or not you stick with “working class,” I suggest you follow the standard of indicating the percentage of the student body who are Pell-eligible as an indicator of low income. In any case, avoid using “poor” as a descriptor. (See Hurst, A. L. (2022). Swimming upstream. Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Higher Education.)
• The enormous literature on college choice should at least be referenced.

 

Methodologically, the reader should know: (some of this information might be in tables)

• When did the study take place?
• The degree to which the regional and flagship institutions are characteristic of their type. Is it not the case that many (most?) regional institutions are non-residential and employ a lot of contingent faculty? I have no idea whether small classes are the norm at regional institutions, but the institution you studied seems to have full time, student-centered teaching faculty and a largely residential student body. And many flagships are highly selective (Michigan, UVA, UNC etc.). See Patton’s classic work on purposive sampling, with the goal of clarifying whether and why you chose these institutions as typical cases, extreme cases, information-rich cases, or some other criterion.  
• How many students filled out the survey, what percentage were eligible to participate and what percentage of these agreed to be interviewed. How did you choose among eligible participants?
• Need a little more on coding—this section is quite sparse

 

 

Smaller points and suggested recent literature.

• The use of in vivo quotations for section headings is descriptive and engaging.
• Qualify your claim that “BA increases earnings for low-income students by a smaller margin” than for higher-income students? The literature supports your own work by saying that this really varies by baccalaureate institution.
• The intersection of race/ethnicity/nationality culture with working-class positionality bears mentioning; much of what is said about working class interdependence might hold for these groups as well.
• Is information available for the faculty social class background at the two institutions? If not, you might call for including this datum in your discussion of implications for further research as a possible explanatory factor for institutional type differences.
• I suggest introducing and explaining Bourdieu’s individual-level “habitus” much earlier, as you’re really focusing on the intersection of individual (social-class-based) and institutional habitus. Are you making a distinction between “class-cultural norms” and “habitus”?

 

Some recent literature to consider:

 

Benson, J. E., & Lee, E. M. (2020). Geographies of campus inequality: Mapping the diverse experiences of first-generation students. Oxford University Press.

Carnevale, A.P., Cheah B., & Van Der Werf, M. (2022). The colleges where low-income students get the highest ROI. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. cew.georgetown.edu/lowincome.

De Schepper, A., Clycq, N., & Kyndt, E. (2022). Socioeconomic differences in the transition from higher education to the labour market: A systematic review. Journal of Career Development, 08948453221077674.

Itzkowitz, M. (2022, January 22). Out with the old, in with the new: Rating higher ed by economic mobility. Third Way. https://www.thirdway.org/report/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new-rating-higher-ed-by-economic-mobility

Manzoni, A. (2021). Equalizing or stratifying? Intergenerational persistence across college degrees. The Journal of Higher Education, 92(7), 1028-1058.

Manzoni, A., & Streib, J. (2019). The equalizing power of a college degree for first-generation college students: Disparities across institutions, majors, and achievement levels. Research in higher education, 60(5), 577-605.

Nunn, Lisa M. (2021) College Belonging: How first-year and first-generation students navigate campus life. Rutgers University Press.

Silver, B. R. 2020b. The Cost of inclusion: How student conformity leads to inequality on college campuses. University of Chicago Press

Silver, B. R. 2020a. Social class and habitus at the end of college: Cultural similarity and difference among graduating seniors. Sociological Focus 53(2), 190–206.

Streib, J., Rochmes, J. Arriaga, F., Tavares, C., & Weed, E. (2021). Class and the cultural styles applicants present to gatekeepers. Poetics, 86.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #2,

I greatly appreciate the time you took to offer thoughtful and thought-provoking feedback on my manuscript. In response to your comments, I have undertaken a substantial revisions which I believe has resulted in a much stronger piece. I have attached a point-by-point response indicating the specific actions I took to address each item. I formatted my responses in Times New Roman and color blue to be distinguishable from your comments.

Sincerely,

Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The proposed article is well structured. The theoretical framework used is adequate, although the international references in discussion need to be expanded. The method should identify more clearly the selection criteria and data collection techniques. It is recommended to expand references in discussion and conclusions.

https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2019.1653838

https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1836144

•  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #3,

Thank you for taking the time to review my manuscript. I have considered your feedback carefully and made several changes that I believe strengthen my piece. 

With regard to method, I have added substantial detail to this suction such that selection criteria and data collection techniques are now much clearer. 

With regard to expanding references in the discussion and conclusion: Thanks to you, I realized the discussion section was missing references and that has been addressed in the revised manuscript. The conclusion section itself has expnad3d considerably and along with it the references used. 

With regard to expanding international references, I was pleased to find a directly relevant source, a case study comparing Turkish and German schools using the framework of organizational habitus. This was an excellent addition to my reference list which already included sources from Norway, Spain, and Britain. The particular subject of social class influence on academic strategies in different institutional contexts is fairly new and thus far the majority is from the U.S or England.

Thank you for the links to two articles on the subject of social work students in comparative context and social work internships.