The working class is not flocking to college. In the past three decades, college graduates’
earnings have climbed to 60% higher than those of high school graduates, but the
proportion of Americans who completed four-year degrees has not risen substantially. A
slight increase in the percentage of women who graduate was offset by a decrease in the
percentage of men.^97
Insistence on college makes sense for professional elite kids: for them, it’s the
prerequisite that allows them to reproduce their parents’ class status. But college may not
make economic sense for working-class kids. It’s a much riskier decision that may not
pay off. Working-class kids worry they might end up with a first-class degree and still fail
to get a job because they don’t know the unwritten social codes of professional life; a
British news report told of class migrants failing to get investment banking jobs in London
because they didn’t know the “no brown in town” rule (i.e., don’t wear brown shoes in
the City).^98 Vance relied on his professional-class girlfriend to explain the folkways of
her class. Without her, he notes, he lacked the social capital to navigate an elite career.
At an interview, he called her from the restroom to find out which fork to use. Lucky he
did: “the[se] interviews were about passing a social test—a test of belonging, of holding
your own in a corporate boardroom, of making connections with potential future
clients.”^99
Research by Lauren Rivera and András Tilcsik put some numbers behind this when they
sent over 300 fictitious resumes to 147 top law firms. “All applicants were in the top 1%
of their class and were on law review,” and they had identical (and impressive) work and
academic achievements, they write. The researchers also inserted subtle cues about social
class “via accepted and often required portions of resumes: awards and extracurricular
activities.” For example, the lower-class applicant was listed as enjoying pick-up soccer
and country music and volunteered as a mentor for fellow first-generation college
students, while the upper-class applicant enjoyed sailing and classical music and
volunteered as a generic student mentor.
The employers overwhelmingly favored the higher-class man: over 16% of his resumes
resulted in a callback. Only about 1% of the lower-class man’s resumes did so, even
though he was just as qualified.^100 What’s the payoff on his education?
Americans assume college is a class escalator, and it can be for the nonelite kids who
make it into Yale or Harvard. But few do. A recent study found that 38 colleges,
including five in the Ivy League, have more students from the top 1% than from the
entire bottom 60% of the income distribution. Far less than 10% of college students in the
- Why Doesn’t the Working Class Get with It and Go to College?