Feature Book Review & Citations

In recent years, U.S. policy makers have set an ambitious goal for the country. By 2020, they want the United States to regain the top position as the country with the highest proportion of college graduates in the population. Reaching this college completion goal will require broader access to higher education because institutions must include more students than currently in attendance. More blue-collar scholars must enroll and persist to attain the national goal, yet considerable research shows that students from working-class backgrounds are significantly less likely to earn a college degree than their more privileged peers.

In this first volume in a new series offered by the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, Krista Soria provides a well-written and comprehensive look at the scholarship surrounding working-class student success in higher education. More important, however, she engages in discussion of how the actions of college educators and staff can improve the odds of success for these students. She draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his concepts of social and cultural capital to demonstrate how the social system of the modern university reinforces inequality by perpetuating middle- and upper-class cultural values, norms, and perspectives. For blue-collar students to succeed, those in postsecondary institutions must make social class visible and seek to uncover and eradicate bias in daily practices in and out of the classroom.

Soria details the structural barriers for working-class students that hinder matriculation into universities. In the key chapter, she focuses on factors that affect persistence, such as the students' precollege academic preparation and their college selection processes as well as institutional admissions and financial aid policies and practices, including the likely outcomes of these efforts. She offers a deft summary of all that can and does go wrong for working-class college students. Although they may not find the information particularly revolutionary, advisors will appreciate the way Soria pulls it all together into a well-documented state-of-the-student treatise on which she builds the following chapters.

In the key chapters Soria describes the experiences of working-class students in the college classroom and as they attempt to integrate on campus. She explains that the classroom can be a “site of symbolic violence” (p. 30) for these students, who receive cultural messages that devalue and degrade the world from which they hail. Although she does not explicitly say it, Soria makes a compelling argument that these students face stereotype threat on campus (Steele, 2010). To address the concerns, she calls for increased visibility of the hidden college curriculum as well as for leadership to consider and address reasons that working class values are not welcomed on campus.

Soria incorporates a number of useful suggestions for ways faculty members can support working-class students in their classrooms, and advisors can apply many of these ideas in their interactions with students. The chapter on campus life also provides a number of excellent suggestions for helping working-class students realistically integrate on campus in ways that honor their values, instead of requiring them to conform to the privileged majority. The final chapter serves as a grand summary for campuswide reform.

This book should be required reading for everyone on campus.

Reference

Steele, C. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Book reviews are featured on the NACADA Journal web site: http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Book-Reviews.aspx

Academic Advising: A Handbook for Advisors and Students. Volume 1: Models, Students, Topics, and Issues. (2014). Book by Richard L. Miller and Jessica G. Irons (Eds.). Review by Laura Hauck-Vixie. N.P.: Society for the Teaching of Psychology (American Psychology Association, Division 2). 249 pp., $0.00 (e-book). ISBN 978-1-941804-32-2.

Building Synergy for High Impact Educational Initiatives: First-Year Seminars and Learning Communities. (2016). Book by Lauren Chism and Janine Graziano (Eds.). Review by Joshua D. Adams. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center, First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. 212 pp., $30.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-889271-98-9.

Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking With People Who Think Differently. (2015). Book by Dawn Markova and Angie McArthur. Review by Aramis Martinez. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau. 384 pp., $28.00. ISBN 9780812994902.

Constructivism Reconsidered in the Age of Social Media. (2016). Book by Chris Stabile and Jeff Ershler (Eds.). Review by Danalee K. Brehman. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 136 pp., $29.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-119-21614-8.

An Exploration of Intersecting Identities of First-Generation, Low-Income Students. (2015). Book by Rashne R. Jehangir, Michael J. Stebleton, and Veronica Deenanath. Review by Shannon Johnson. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center, First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. 65 pp., $18.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-889271-97-2.

Facilitative Collaborative Knowledge Co-construction. (2015). Book by Gertina J. van Schalkwyk and Rik Carl D'Amato (Eds.). Review by Matt Eng. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 112 pp., $29.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-119-16949-9.

Foundations for Critical Thinking. (2015). Book by Trudy Bers, Marc Chun, William T. Daly, Christine Harrington, and Barbara F. Tobolowsky. Review by Amber Kargol. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center, First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. 223 pp., $30.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-889-27193-4

From the Confucian Way to Collaborative Knowledge Co-construction (New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 142). (2015). Book by Certina J. van Schalkwyk and Rik C. D'Amato (Eds.). Review by Rick Malleus. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 101 pp., $29.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-119-10844-3.

Gender and Sexual Diversity in U.S. Higher Education: Contexts and Opportunities for LGBTQ College Students. (2015). Book by Dafina-Lazarus Stewart, Kristen A. Renn, and G. Blue Brazelton (Eds.). Review by Megan Coburn. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 104 pp., $29.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-1192-2020-6.

The Girls. (2016). Book by Emma Cline. Review by Terri J. Tharp. New York, NY: Random House. 368 pp., $27.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-8129-9860-3.

Group Career Counseling: Practices and Principles, 2nd ed. (2015). Book by K. Richard Pyle and Seth C. W. Hayden. Review by Christine R. Cook. Broken Arrow, OK: National Career Development Association. 64 pp., $35.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-885333-52-0.

A Guide to Becoming a Scholarly Practitioner in Student Affairs. (2015). Book by Lisa J. Hatfield and Vicki L. Wise. Review by Craig M. McGill and Maura M. Reynolds. Sterling, VA: Stylus. 112 pp., $19.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-62036-152-8.

Keeping Up With the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics. (2013). Book by Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim. Review by Audrey E. Cox. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. 240 pp., $30.00. ISBN 978-1-4221-8725-8.

Latino Access to Higher Education: Ethnic Realities and New Directions for the Twenty-First Century. (2015). Book by Martin Guevara Urbina and Claudia Rodriguez Wright. Review by Anna Hegedus. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas. 282 pp., $43.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-398-09091-3.

Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education. (2016). Book by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson. Review by Neena Fink. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 184 pp., $24.95. ISBN 978-0-691-17210-1.

Losing My Cool. (2010). Book by Thomas Chatterton Williams. Review by Matt Kubacki. New York, NY: Penguin. 240 pp., $15.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-14-311962-3.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. (2015). Book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Review by James Creech. Boston, MA: Mariner. 378 pp., $15.95. ISBN 978-0-544-57478-6.

Multidisciplinary Collaboration: Research and Relationships. (2014). Book by Karen Weller Swanson (Ed.). Review by Kay Hamada. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 98 pp., $29.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-118-98056-9.

Peak. (2016). Book by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. Review by Tara Moroney. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 336 pp., $28.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-544-45623-5.

Radicalizing Learning: Adult Education for a Just World. (2010). Book by Stephen D. Brookfield and John D Holst. Review by Doug Ballard. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. 288 pp., $40.00. ISBN 978-0-7879-9825-7.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist. (2007). Book by Moshin Hamid. Review by Lisa Giguere. New York City, NY: Mariner. 184 pp., $14.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-15-603402-9.

Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice. (2016). Book by Nikhil Goyal. Review by Don Presnell. New York, NY: Doubleday. 320 pp., $26.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-0385-54012-4.

Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel. (2014). Book by Jason Padgett and Maureen Seaberg. Review by Diana DeVol Bevilacqua. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 256 pp., $27.00. ISBN 978-0-544-04560-6.

To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care. (2013). Book by Cris Beam. Review by Matthew Jeffries. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 336 pp., $26.00. ISBN 978-0-15-101412-5

Welcoming Blue-Collar Scholars Into the Ivory Tower: Developing Class-Conscious Strategies for Student Success. (2015). Book by Krista M. Soria. Review by Rebecca L. Torstrick. Columbia, SC: National Resource Center, First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. 91 pp., $25.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-889271-96-5.