The Socioeconomics of College Inequity : A Review of Armstrong and Hamilton’s Paying for the Party

The way in which postsecondary institutions — and their social and academic infrastructures—support affluent, socially-oriented students produces a magnifying effect upon micro-circumstances which in turn affect macro-level post-postsecondary advantages and disadvantages is the chief phenomenon discovered and examined in the 2013 text, Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Harvard University Press). Drawing from a single case study, Armstrong and Hamilton followed a cohort of freshman female students who occupied the same floor in the same dorm at a midwestern flagship public research university — dubbed Midwest University or “MU” — during the 2003-2004 academic year. Both researchers lived in the dorm from 2003-2004 with the women, and per the study's methodology, approximately ninety students were interviewed over the course of the year and provided follow-up information through the 2007-2008 academic year regarding their choices to stay at the university, transfer from the university, or leave postsecondary education entirely. The researchers were able to maintain communication with nearly the entire cohort over the course of the study, which allowed the researchers to connect not only pre-college circumstances but also experiences at MU and beyond to each student's postsecondary outcomes. Their answers, coupled with intensive socioeconomic background information about each of the students, paints a picture of the university that is inherently biased against non-affluent students, less-social students, and students without substantial financial and social support from parental structures