Socioeconomic Status and Social Class in Higher Education

Learn more about social class and socioeconomic status, various forms of capital, class identities, and implications in student affairs. This session will be facilitated by Socioeconomic and Class Issues in Higher Education Knowledge Community leadership team members.

This program will offer participants an overview of class identity and its corresponding forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Yosso, 2005).  The workshop will offer information from research and literature while also allowing participants to reflect on and assess how class identity does and might show up in higher education and student affairs. The three content categories of the session will include: 1) Defining Class, 2) Types of Capital, 3) Interactions Between Class Identity and Student Affairs.  There will also be a Q&A session at the end of the session.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of participating in this online learning community briefing, participants will be able to:

• define social class, including differentiating social class and socioeconomic status;
• recognize how social class shows up in student affairs; and
• articulate the importance of exploring social class identity.