Divergent Approaches to Access: How Selective College Admissions Offices Recruit Lower-Income, First-Generation, and Working-Class Students

In recent years, selective colleges and universities have made diversifying their student bodies a top priority, yet the class diversity on these campuses has barely shifted. While most research on class disparities in college admissions focuses on student explanations, this study seeks to understand how campus admissions approaches to recruitment may also contribute to why so few lower-income, first-generation, and/or working-class students (LIFGWC students) attend selective colleges. To address this question, we conducted interviews with seven admissions officers from selective campuses with both relatively strong and weak records of LIFGWC students recruitment. Institutions with stronger records of recruiting LIFGWC students actively sought out new initiatives to make their college more accessible for LIFGWC students, and these actions were motivated by a shared focus on improving larger societal inequality. Although campuses with weaker records also expanded their recruitment strategies, their efforts were often piecemeal and motivated by competition for students and institutional rankings rather than a larger mission to improve diversity and equity. These findings suggest that institutional missions and philosophies are central to increasing access.

When solidarity hurts: (Intra)cultural trust, cultural betrayal sexual trauma, and PTSD in culturally diverse minoritized youth transitioning to adulthood

Sexual trauma is associated with PTSD, with perpetrators putting women and girls more at risk than men and boys. Young adulthood is a time where risk of victimization and susceptibility to mental health problems increase. Certain contributors of costly trauma outcomes may be affected by the larger context of societal inequality. Cultural betrayal trauma theory (CBTT) highlights cultural betrayal in within-group trauma in minoritized populations as a dimension of harm that affects outcomes. In CBTT, within-group trauma violates the (intra)cultural trust—solidarity, love, loyalty, connection, responsibility—that is developed between group members to buffer against societal inequality. This violation, termed a cultural betrayal, can contribute to poorer mental health. The purpose of the current study is to address a gap in the CBTT literature by examining the role of (intra)cultural trust on the association between cultural betrayal sexual trauma and symptoms of PTSD among diverse minoritized youth transitioning to adulthood. Participants ( N = 173) were diverse minoritized college students, who completed a 30-min online questionnaire at a location of their own choosing. Participants received course credit and could decline to answer any question without penalty. The results reveal that the interaction between cultural betrayal sexual trauma and (intra)cultural trust predicted clinically significant symptoms of PTSD. These findings have implications for increased cultural and contextual specificity in trauma research in minoritized populations, which can aid in the development and implementation of culturally competent interventions for diverse minoritized youth survivors of sexual trauma.

Meeting the Real “Gini” of India:

Based on our fraught human history of widespread revolts, it is often presumed that income inequality can disrupt the status-quo. In recent years, researchers have come to question this connection between actual inequality and adverse political results. The findings show that most people around the world are unable to gauge societal inequality through relative comparisons, and are uncertain about both the magnitude and directionality of the gap. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to assess the disparity between Indian respondents’ perceived and actual ratings of income inequality in India using a Gini Coefficient score; and 2) to identify factors that influenced these ratings. Almost 250 respondents from a wide cross-section of India participated in an online survey to give their perceived ratings of India’s Gini coefficient score along with the factors that influenced their responses. Over 90.2% considered the degree of inequality in India to be far higher than the actuality, thus showing the great extent to which they consider their country to be an unequal one. The analysis identifies “Quality of Governance” as the only statistically significant predictor for improving income inequality, showing that the government is considered to be the primary bearer of responsibility for providing quality education and healthcare, which is sadly lacking. Nonetheless, the findings constitute a “call to action” for the Indian Government to implement more effective policies to tackle these issues. Future studies could delve deeper into the problem to determine the extent to which governance influences perceived income inequality in India.

Walls, Cracks and Change: The Challenges and Opportunities of Critically Engaged Research Within Current Academic and Refugee Research Structures

Many consider academic research an important means to address societal inequality of marginalized groups, such as refugees. However, transformative research arguably requires critically engaged practices that consider and transform dominant exclusive structures permeating both society and knowledge production. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities of such research practices, especially given power and (neoliberal) politics around knowledge production within Dutch academic and refugee research structures. Based on 14 researchers’ narratives, the results reveal how critically engaged refugee research is challenged by its marginalized position, academic pressures and culture as well as the recently emerged ‘refugee research business’. However, the paper also uncovers various ways in which researchers manoeuvre within challenging and facilitating structures by operating outside or in the margins of academic structures, making use of facilitating spaces and strategically employing dominant discourses. Finally, researchers arguably transform academic structures by challenging dominant research paradigms and transforming the institution of academics itself.

Preserving prosociality in the face of inequality: A role for multiple group memberships and superordinate group identification

Economic inequality has been linked to profound negative impacts due to its corrosive effect on social relations, and fairness is central to this. In line with social cure theorising, we propose that identification with (superordinate) groups can buffer against these effects. Study 1 ( N = 400) found that perceived fairness of inequality was negatively associated with helping attitudes, but this was attenuated among those who identified more strongly with a superordinate group. Study 2 ( N = 315) focused on perceived fairness of inequality and an expanded range of prosocial outcomes. Perceptions that inequality was fairer were associated with worse prosocial outcomes. However, these relationships were attenuated among those who reported belonging to more groups and those who identified strongly with the superordinate group. These studies highlight the role that group memberships and superordinate identification may play in countering the corrosive effects of societal inequality on prosocial behaviour.

Social Class in Organizations: Entrance, Promotion, and Organizational and Societal Consequences of the Corporate Elite

Organizational theorists studying executives of large corporations have long theorized that top management is dominated by elites of upper social class background. Organizations reflect the class system in the societies they are situated in by advantaging those of higher social class background. If organizations are perpetuating societal inequality by favoring those from higher social class and positioning them to dictate organizational outcomes, it is important to understand ways to reduce inequality by increasing social class diversity, and theorize on the implications of this diversity for business and society. This article brings together scholars on the forefront of social class research to understand the influence of social class on the corporate elite. The scholars explore the effect of social class in attaining access to the most influential managerial positions, conditions that enable greater diversity, and how the corporate elite can affect firm strategic actions and key societal outcomes.

Care Poverty Within the Home Space: Exploring the Emotional Experiences of Unmet Care Needs

Older adults face inequalities in care. The concept of care poverty has been developed to point out how unmet care needs are not just an individual issue but a phenomenon linked to social and economic disadvantage and societal inequality. In this paper, we approach the question of care poverty by focusing on its intertwinement with emotions and the home space. We analyze how the presence, or more commonly absence, of care shapes interviewees’ descriptions of emotional experiences tied to the home space. Our data consists of 12 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 and 2020 with customers of outreach work for older adults in Finland. These customers typically face a situation that can be characterized as care poverty: their care needs are not (or have not been) met by either the service system or informal sources. When analyzing the data, we followed the guidelines for thematic analysis proposed by Braun and Clarke. Our analysis shows how care and lack of care transform interviewees’ emotional connections with the home space, highlighting particularly three main themes: insecurity, isolation and belongingness. Our analysis reveals how lack of care can transform the home into an unsafe place; a space characterized by isolation, or a space where one sometimes ceases to feel at ease or “like oneself.” The emotional experience of home and being adequately cared for is also tied to the sense of (not) belonging to a place. Based on our analysis, we argue that as an experience, care poverty is not just about individual unmet needs and/or a scarcity of resources at the societal level; it should also be understood as deeply relational—born and shaped in interactions (or the lack of interactions) among people, and lived in and through relationships with others. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of a sense of belonging to the feeling of being adequately cared for.

The Democratic Deficit in U.S. Education Governance

Political scientists have largely overlooked the democratic challenges inherent in the governance of U.S. public education—despite profound implications for educational delivery and, ultimately, social mobility and economic growth. In this study, we consider whether the interests of adult voters who elect local school boards are likely to be aligned with the needs of the students their districts educate. Specifically, we compare voters and students in four states on several policy-relevant dimensions. Using official voter turnout records and rich microtargeting data, we document considerable demographic differences between voters who participate in school board elections and the students attending the schools that boards oversee. These gaps are most pronounced in majority nonwhite jurisdictions and school districts with the largest racial achievement gaps. Our novel analysis provides important context for understanding the political pressures facing school boards and their likely role in perpetuating educational and, ultimately, societal inequality.

The Challenges of Achieving Equity Within Public School Gifted and Talented Programs

K–12 gifted and talented programs have struggled with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, native language, and disability inequity since their inception. This inequity has been well documented in public schools since at least the 1970s and has been stubbornly persistent despite receiving substantial attention at conferences, in scholarly journals, and in K–12 schools. The purpose of this article is to outline why such inequity exists and why common efforts to combat it have been unsuccessful. In the end, poorly designed identification systems combined with larger issues of societal inequality and systemic, institutionalized racism are the most likely culprits. I end the article with a hierarchy of actions that could be taken—from low-hanging fruit to major societal changes—in order to combat inequity in gifted education and move the field forward.