Social Class on the American Campus, but Not in the Ads?

I was pleased to see The Chronicle’s recent special supplement, “Diversity in Academe” take up the issue of “Social Class on the American Campus” this year. In the academy, the holy trinity used to consist of inequality by race, class, and gender.  In recent decades, class has often been bumped aside, with the new trio featuring race, gender, and sexual orientation.

But as we make slow – and often unsteady – progress in including and celebrating people of color, women, and gays in our society, class inequality remains, and in some ways has deepened. As Peter Schmidt notes in the supplement’s lead article, “one of the most underrepresented minority groups at many four-year colleges [are] students and faculty members from the working class.” Schmidt gives some heartening evidence that the pendulum may be swinging back on this issue, citing examples of renewed interest in social-class inequality. But I couldn’t help noticing that the advertisements in the 64-page supplement almost always defined diversity in a way that excluded social class.

Temple University highlighted the percentage of students who identify as people of color, and the “123 nations” represented in the student body, but not the proportion who are poor or working class. Aspiring Docs.org mentioned “African Americans, Latinos/as, and Native Americans,” but ignored social-class differences. The University of Illinois’s commitment extended beyond race and ethnicity to include disability, the LGBT community, and women, but not the poor.  Westchester University, too, reached out to people of color, women, and individuals with disabilities, but not those who are poor or working class.

Georgia Tech and the University of Alabama focused their ads on the matriculation of African American students and representation of African American professors, while Northern Arizona University focused on Native American and Hispanic Americans. San Francisco State highlighted its College of Ethnic Studies that emphasizes the traditions of “Asian, African, Hispanic and Native Americans.” UC Irvine noted that 60 percent of students identify as people of color, but didn’t note the percentage who are poor or working class. The sponsors of the GMAT cited statistics on test takers who were women, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans, but not those who are working-class Americans. Rensselaer added intellectual diversity to the mix, alongside culture, race, and gender, but stopped short of socioeconomics. Stony Brook University’s ad, “What Diversity Looks Like,” mentioned religious diversity, alongside a mosaic of “nationalities … races, ethnicities and cultures,” but did not extend diversity to include class. Teachers College Press highlighted books on Asians and Latinos, but in an issue of The Chronicle whose editorial content focused on social-class research, didn’t include any books on that topic.

As I paged through the ads, I was pleased to see towards the very end, on pages B60 and B62, that Emerson College highlighted its diversity by “class” along with a quite lengthy list that included  “race … gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, disability, political affiliation, and national origin.” Likewise, Augsburg College indicated it was ideally situated to attract faculty, students and staff “with diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.”

To be clear, the celebration of diversity by race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation represents an enormous step forward. But advertisements are telling, because institutions must boil their key messages down to a small number of words. To date, for the vast majority of colleges and universities, social class still doesn’t make the cut.