Paying for the Party-- How College Maintains Inequality

Parent Cafe
361

I can’t help but think that possibly the lower income girls are burdened with the misguided popular outlook that people with upper tier earnings are to be resented and questioned. If you bring that “populist” (euphemistic to me) outlook to your interactions with upper-income students, you might find some pretty cool shoulders around.

I’ve told my kids never to disrespect someone because their parents earn less money than we do in our family. But I’ve also made clear that we don’t have to tolerate resentment or hostility. I don’t think that a lot of people today realize that it is a two-way street.

In any case, its old news that many, many people from lower income backgrounds are indoctrinated to feel suspicious towards those form higher income backgrounds, and that often their families are not supportive of them doing what is necessary to succeed.

362

357: Right, only the rich girls get the jobs they wanted. (I was just assuming Whitney got her comeuppance for being so nasty) I am going to read the book again, and try and keep everyone straight. Now I have the hard copy in hand and can see the charts that were too small on kindle.

mom2and: The timing of the girls’ graduation is really bothering me about the results. I think things didn’t really get bad until the spring 2009 graduates hit the job market and were applying to graduate programs. But I don’t really know. As I read it again, I am going to pay close attention to that part.

363

“My expectation would have been a parent of one of Whitney’s sorority sisters used connections to get Whitney a job, or at least interviews for possible jobs.
Did her sorority sisters not help Whitney for a reason? Was it not the norm in that group to create networking opportunities for their sisters without any?”

There is only so much networking one can do. There’s nothing that says being in a sorority means that every one of your sisters’ daddies are holding a bunch of jobs for their daughters’ friends.

I did go to bat for a sister of mine. I had interviewed with X company in X field, took the job, loved it. They normally recruited at the MBA level but my year they did a “test run” at the undergrad level and that’s how I got hired. Three years later they decided to go back to the undergrad level. I wound up speaking with a sister of mine who had gotten on the interview schedule; I helped “prep” her in terms of what skills and experience she should empathize. She wound up getting hired, we worked in the same department, she wound up working for me and then we both wound up going out on our own. We’re still in contact. I don’t regret this one iota - she was a fabulous choice. But it wasn’t because she was my “sister” per se. It was because she was the kind of person that I knew would do a terrific job and really spark to it.

The rest of my sisters? Well, I’d certainly help them out, but we’re in all different fields! There’s really not much we can do for one another. And sad to say, no one’s daddy was handing out jobs like candy.

A sister of mine just wrote a book - I’m in the midst of reading it and I am going to “promote” it on Facebook.

364

Sure, but in this book “only so much” turned out to be nothing, for the women we know about. Being in their sororities actively hurt the future careers of the middle class women: they got no networking aid from their richer sisters, and they allowed themselves to be seduced away from more marketable majors and into majors that were neither academic nor career-focused.

Of the “wannabes,” Whitney did the best after college. But by her own admission and in the judgment of the authors, she would have been a lot better off if she hadn’t blown off the business school so she could socialize. The book says that almost all the “wannabes” downgraded their academic plans to try to keep up with the party scene, and it didn’t work out for any of them.

365

I think this is for longer term jobs. Things got really bad in the fall of 2008, but for the girls that took longer to graduate or did not have a job by the time of graduation, it was tough.

Don’t the authors suggest that the lower SES girls would have been better off in more career oriented majors like teaching or nursing, rather than suggesting they should study more academic majors like philosophy? I have heard that undergraduate business majors are not very employable either, unless in something more mathematical like accounting.

366

363 ^yes. In this book, sorority life was detrimental. What isn't clear to me is whether the post graduation results were because of the economy or because these Indiana sororities are out of the norm sororities and don't look out for their sisters.

Some sorority graduates I knew during that time period did get foot-in-the-door interviews from sorority connections and got those jobs. However, these women were engineering graduates.

it is impossible to compare them with the girls in the book in terms of qualifications.

I sort of believe in this Agatha Christie, Miss Marple idea that if you understand the people in your village, you can understand the world. I thought I understood my sorority, but it doesn’t help me understand what is going on in the book. I keep trying to figure out the disconnect.

367

360, dadx: If you had time to read the book and comment, I believe your perspective would be really valuable to the discussion. I didn't think what you describe was going on, but I would be interested to hear what you thought after reading it.

368

The book claims that graduates of the actual business school at Indiana have an excellent placement program, one of the best in the country. “Erica,” who was in the business school, said of her job hunt:

That placement service was not available to people with business-lite degrees at Indiana. Entrance to the business major at Indiana is competitive and requires a certain GPA.

369

“What isn’t clear to me is whether the post graduation results were because of the economy or because these Indiana sororities are out of the norm sororities and don’t look out for their sisters.”

Even WITH “looking out for your sisters,” there’s just absolutely no guarantee that anyone is going to have a networking connection that’s going to pan out. Networking is done through all different ways. Someone here on CC had her kid host my kid for an overnight. Someone else on CC was gracious enough to read my kid’s resume and have my kid apply for an internship. I have precious few connections, but if I had them, I’d certainly use them for people. My point is simply - yes, Greek life is a way to network, but it’s no different in concept from any other way of networking through mutual friends / acquaintances. My biggest “network node” from my NU days is someone who was a Big Man on Campus but wasn’t in Greek life at all.

370

I don’t fault the Indiana sororities for not networking better, but I do fault them, and the college that allows them on campus, for seducing young women to ignore their academics in favor of more partying and easy, almost worthless majors. Encouraging someone to ruin her future life doesn’t sound sisterly to me. Some upperclassman at Whitney’s sorority should have been telling her to put down the hairdryer and the makeup on Wednesday night, and pick up a textbook.

Plenty of sororities on plenty of campuses have academically talented sisters. It’s not impossible. I was looking at a Facebook page of one of the Tufts sororities, and they were wishing Happy Birthday to their sister who is Physics major who interned at CERN. She didn’t get that internship by partying seven nights a week.

371

http://www.dennisonsmith.ca/

What the heck! Here’s the website of a sister of mine. Please read her books :slight_smile:

372

OK Purple–you are in the 1% of USA from nowhere little towns. Then use your imagination a little.

373

Yay, I’m finally a 1%er! Sure, there is a range in income in my “nowhere little town” that some posters constantly disparage, but richer kids don’t snub/refuse to acknowledge another high school kid because their parents make less money. That concept was foreign to me too, and I’m not that far from the Chicago suburbs.

The Kelley School of Business at IU does have a good reputation. I"m all for professionally oriented careers like accounting and nursing. Not always the popular view on cc though.

374

Go watch “Last Picture Show” Most John Hughes movies. Nobody said all but it can does happen enough they made 100’s of films and wrote classic books about it. Guess you small towns kids had no films or books either.

Kelley Placement data

http://kelley.iu.edu/UCSO/files/2014%20Annual%20Report-ONLINE.pdf

375

What’s your problem, barrons?

376

I don’t think it’s a grand secret that Tufts, overall, attracts a more serious student body than Indiana.

377

I liked the sample of your friend’s book, PG.

378

Barrons–oh shucks, we didn’t have a movie picture house. We were too busy detassling corn and wrassling hogs :). Both of which I’ve done, and done well. Guess we just didn’t have enough learnin and culture to be uppity because we might have had money. I’ll make sure and jump the next train to the North Shore.

PG, alh, and CF - have enjoyed your perspectives and review of the book.

379

Yes, CF - she’s an example of how being in a house expanded my horizons. I actually wish we’d been closer than we were, as I always found her fascinating. I’m very “straight” and she’s very creative, won writing awards, was into avant-garde theater, etc.

380

I read the book a couple of months ago and thought about it a lot, so I’m glad i found this thread.

@cardinal fang

The notion that higher SES/more connected girls - the ones in the better sorority whose parents knew fraternity brothers parents and traveled in the same circles, would be less likely to be sexually assaulted, or pushed to have sex. Because the men felt some kinship with the connected girls, and there’d be social consequences for pushing them to have sex (either then at college or later on), but none with the lower SES/not connected-sorority girls. That was something I hadn’t thought of before.

@pizzagirl

But the issue IS college kids and how they relate to each other. They care about hierarchy and status and a lot of stuff they’ll outgrow later on, but not probably in the span of time the book covers.

@alh

I was on a similar tour and was struck by the same. In particular I recall skiing being free for everyone, down to rental equipment. THAT is a school trying to minimize gaps. It’s also a pretty wealthy school, if we are thinking of the same one,and can afford to do stuff like provide no-loan FA and actually give poor students an admissions bump.

I never quite got why they didn’t band together. There they were - the “dark side”. One or two were striving to be part of the “in” group but not all of them were.

@alh

Me too! I put a signup sheet outside the preschool door, even, for anyone to come. That group got huge also, and eventually turned into a monthly-mom-gathering that we still do, 17 years later.

@marie1234

IMO it is a very different thing to not make a sorority because your looks or social skills or family connections are judged to be lacking, than it is to be cut from the varsity volleyball team because your spike goes out of bounds or you aren’t fast enough, or the school musical because you don’t sing well, or the elite debate team because your speaking or research skills aren’t up to par. Being disappointed by those rejections can make you determined to do better, to practice, or it can point you away from that thing and toward something you’re better at. I’m not seeing any parallels with sorority rejection.

For the record, the book doesn’t name IU or the dorm. It refers to the school as “Midwestern University” and the form as “Party Dorm”. If you didn’t read a lot ABOUT the book you wouldn’t know what U it was set in.

One thing that struck me is that the authors agree that a lot of these issues go away when the U is a very selective one.