Degrees of Risk : Navigating Insecurity and Inequality in Public Higher Education

Blake R. Silver

ISBN 10: 0226834743 / ISBN 13: 9780226834740

Editore: The University Of Chicago Press Mär 2025, 2025

Riguardo questo articolo

Neuware - 'While some see college as an insulated bubble free from real world risks or problems, for many, it is a high risk, high rewards gamble in which the rules are unknown. In this project, sociologist Blake Silver sets out to show us what this uncertainty means in the lives of students today. Silver interviewed more than 100 college students at a large and diverse public institution that prioritized choice and flexibility over structured guidance. As a result, students described anxieties around choosing and changing majors, selecting and failing courses, finding and losing funding. Risks, too, characterized decisions made in the absence of support, such as whether to transfer institutions, take online classes, or what to do if an internship didn't come through. Amid this pervasive culture of risk and uncertainty, organizational arrangements affected students from different backgrounds in uneven ways. Students' orientations toward insecurity weren't guided by personality or preferences: They were dictated by the ways personal and family resources came together with university resources. While privileged students with external resources described positive experiences charting their own path through college, students with fewer resources were faced with a decision between playing it safe and attempting to make the most of college with little to orient or support them. He observed that some students' aversion to risk constrained their access to opportunities. And he witnessed the anxieties of those who attempted to maximize the opportunities available to them, spreading themselves thin without any assurance their efforts would pay off. Collectively, these stories help us understand social and cultural assets in educational settings in new ways. When insecurity is woven into policies that promote flexibility and choice over structured guidance, college advantages those who are most comfortable with risk-taking and exploration, while disadvantaging those for whom insecurity poses a more immediate danger. Silver closes by identifying promising policies and practices that can mitigate uncertainty and instability in higher education'.

Codice articolo 9780226834740

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Degrees of Risk : Navigating Insecurity and Inequality in Public Higher Education
• Editore: The University Of Chicago Press Mär 2025
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0226834743
• ISBN 13: 9780226834740
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 229 L x 152 A x 20 P (millimetri) 229 millimetri di larghezza per 152 millimetri di altezza per 20 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 454 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

An ethnographic analysis of how insecurity is at the heart of contemporary higher education.

Institutions of higher education are often described as “ivory towers,” places of privilege where students exist in a “campus bubble,” insulated from the trials of the outside world. These metaphors reveal a widespread belief that college provides young people with stability and keeps insecurity at bay. But for many students, that’s simply not the case.

Degrees of Risk reveals how insecurity permeates every facet of college life for students at public universities. Sociologist Blake Silver dissects how these institutions play a direct role in perpetuating uncertainty, instability, individualism, and anxiety about the future. Silver examined interviews with more than one hundred students who described the risks that surrounded every decision: which major to choose, whether to take online classes, and how to find funding. He expertly identified the ways the college experience played out differently for students from different backgrounds. For students from financially secure families with knowledge of how college works, all the choices and flexibility of college felt like an adventure or a wealth of opportunities. But for many others, especially low-income, first-generation students, their personal and family circumstances meant that that flexibility felt like murkiness and precarity. In addition, he discovered that students managed insecurity in very different ways, intensifying inequality at the intersections of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other sociodemographic dimensions. Drawing from these firsthand accounts, Degrees of Risk presents a model for a better university, one that fosters success and confidence for a diverse range of students.

Informazioni sull?autore

Blake R. Silver is associate professor of sociology at George Mason University, where he also serves as director of educational pathways and faculty development in the Honors College. He is the author of The Cost of Inclusion: How Student Conformity Leads to Inequality on College Campuses, also published by the University of Chicago Press.