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How Paying for The Party connects to our college live
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality is a book written by Elizabeth A. Armstrong& Laura T. Hamilton that discussed some typical phenomena happening in college in the method of research. The keyword pointed out by Armstrong and Hamilton is the existence of several “pathways” that college students can take through the university experience. These pathways include three main pathways which influence the students the most: the party pathway, the mobility pathway, and the professional pathway. As a formal student at the University of Delaware, the applications of these pathways can be found in my college life as well, which I will discuss further in the following essay.
The party pathway, as the author described, is built around an implicit agreement between the college and students to demand little of each other. (2014, Armstrong& Hamilton) The core group of this pathway is those students who are extremely rich but with average academic credentials. These groups, because of their abundant economic conditions, can support them not to occupy the financial resources of the school during the school period, while reducing their personal standard of their own academic condition. Indirectly allow universities to give more resources to students who are in financial difficulties. The result of the party pathway is not only the unqualified education for those students but also their important family resources and contacts, in which these resources and contacts have arranged jobs for them after graduation, regardless of their educational background. Result rich-kind student can lower their demand for those majors that can bring high income (and requires working hard) in the future and spend as much time as they study without reducing time spent on entertainment. This has also prevented student to walk on the mobility pathway because students who have financial problem seeks for entering the parties but does not have enough resources to support them, which denied their further interaction with the parties. This phenomenon will cause these students to struggle to succeed because they will neither gain resources and support from parties nor success in academics since they spend too much time on social networking. A real example happened to one of my friends who also come from China to study here. Unlike my family, his family is extremely rich and has a sound capital base. When we are all freshmen, he chooses to study hospitality management in order to inherit his family business. In class, he met a friend who also came from China, but his family condition was only ordinary middle class. While they exchange information during social communication in a group, the rich side becomes the center of the social circle at ease. The weaker side wants to integrate into the social circle of the rich to get more resources, To achieve this, they eat, drink, and entertain together every day, and the result of spending too much time and energy on social entertainment is decadence in the academic area. Last year, they both dropped out due to their lack of attendance and bad academic performance and can no longer maintain the status of their F-1 visa. After they both go back to China, the rich one is still the center of the party, and he told me his father can still support him to complete higher education using another method if he wants to. On the other side, the middle-class classmate directly goes to work with a high school diploma since his family no longer has the financial ability to support him, which splits him further from the party he originally wants to join. Like the research case provided in the book, among the less popular students that Armstrong and Hamilton followed, those who moved to regional universities or community colleges were actually more successful than those who tried to stick with the parties in University, although the result is they were less successful in their careers than other students that graduate in the same year with rich family resources, all of the six working-class students in Armstrong and Hamilton’s floor successfully graduated in five Graduation years. This can show the bond between party and individual in University is actually not decisive, though still attractive by its charm. But until states invest more in higher education, it is likely that universities will find it hard to turn their attention away from students who bring the most tuition fees and donations. (2014, Hamilton)
The mobility pathway, however, is considered negative if we use common sense to judge it. Influenced by some parents’ relationships and resources, the jobs their children will get after graduation are already prepared. This has resulted in bad professional ethics in a few privileged classes and has a bad impact on those unfortunate students who are in the mobility pathway around them. These students are driven by pressure to challenge themselves academically, and rise up in life to succeed, which leads to a goal that increases their class status. Most managers are committed to improving the quality of education and academic level, serving first-generation and ethnic minority students. Their goals are well aligned with the mobility pathway. (2014, Hamilton). Since the tuition fee of UD is not low in the standard of a Private American University, students of a mobility pathway would probably work harder. I once had a chance to meet with an Arabic student called Mohannad, who had won a scholarship with outstanding academic achievements. He came from a very unknown Arab States in worldwide (the name of the country begins with Y). He told me that, unlike other Arabic students he knows, he neither has any relatives that live in the United States nor a family with extensive social connections. He came from a normal middle-class family and passed the University entrance examination all by his own effort. He had no background advantage compared to other students entering UD at the same time, but this willingness to change the situation becomes what drives him to succeed. The social capital that he lacks is going to be built in his generation. From what we had talked about in the lecture, it is unclear how to measure social capital in contemporary society due to the increase in non-place-based connections facilitated by the rise of internet communication, can also be said that social capital is decreasing. This will hinder his development of networking to some extent, but being an international student means that he has access to a wider range of social resources, which will reduce this hinder. Hamilton and Armstrong conclude their book with another reference to Alana, a mobile path student who overcame the hinders in front of her when she was at MU and graduated. However, she began to work without a degree, which shows that students on a mobility pathway do have more choices for the future since they work harder.
Last but not least, Armstrong and Hamilton talked about professional pathways, which might be the most common pathway for students in traditional thoughts: Regardless of external factors, students get skills for some specific jobs that they consider as their career goals. As all educational institutions do, UD provides resources, for example, a library and academic counseling. These resources are developed to help students get better with their academic skills because this is the original meaning of education. Rationally speaking, a professional pathway is good for all individuals whose social identity is a student. However, financial status and social status matters. Higher education is not affordable for everybody. To some extent, the existence of party pathways and mobility pathways are the outcome of social hierarchy problems. As an ideal way to study in college, the professional pathway is more advanced, the core of the professional pathway is competition (2014, Armstrong& Hamilton) since the individuals on this pathway have a clear target (such as an entry top program or internship) and wills to pay effort in order to gain more resources. In UD, these settled goals are like study abroad chances and scholarship funds. Because these goals are set higher than the general academic goals, we can find that students on the professional pathway are highly qualified and well-prepared for further competition.
In conclusion, Armstrong and Hamilton identified a range of ways students could go through college experiences. These include approaches based on the gatherings of social groups, improving class status, and developing professionalism and acquiring skills. Each pathway generalized some unique behavior that familiar to college students, such as UD students. The impact of different roads is also very different, which needs us to pay attention to and take it seriously.
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