There are various ways of defining a social class depending on the author. Marxists its membership is determined by ones relationship to means production .This refers to what one does within the society as a way of producing goods and services. According to Marxists capitalists owned the means of production and they occupied the upper most social class while worker labored in the factories owned by the capitalists producing the wealth for the capitalists and they occupied a lower social class. Bourgeoisies was a class of professionals between the capitalists and the workers and they had characteristics of both the two classes Modern sociologists look at social class as a stratification of the society into different continuums of strata depending on their educational attainment,income,wealth or occupational prestige(Murray and Charles 98 ).Elite institutions are privately owned learning institutions that have a high cost of attendance in terms of fees and other charges and quite selective in the cadre of students that gain admission and over the tears have predominantly served students from upper and middle upper socio economic status. They impact onto the student a high social standing. They have been shown propagate the socio economic reproduction by passing the socio economic positions and advantages to generations.They also play a role in providing socio economic mobility to students of lower socio economic status. This they do by passing along to the students that attend them social connections and privileges further cementing the advantages that the upper and middle class students have hence facilitating socio economic reproduction. They also provide financial aid and student support services hence the students from lower socio economic classes who get a chance to attend them are better placed and get a chance to move upwards in the socio economic ladder.
Access to college education has greatly changed in the last fifty years. Prior to 1950’s only about two in every ten secondary school graduate proceeded to attain a college certificate. This small percentage mainly consisted of children from upper and middle socio economic background. The students from lower socio economic background more often seeked employment after high school to support their families (Prince, Russ and Lewis 56).There has however been a steady increase in access to higher education by most students this has greatly been contributed by a shift in public policy that govern post-secondary education with regard to issues relating to access, financial aid and equity to all irrespective of race, ethnicity or socio economic background. There has also been a gradual change in recruitment, admission, marketing and financial aid extended to students. The enactment of Servicemen’s Readjustment Act in 1944 saw the expansion of the public community college system and hence expanding access to post-secondary education for thousands of student in America. Civil Rights Act of 1964 followed by the Higher Education Act of 1960’s facilitated increase in number of students who proceeded to college after secondary school by more than half by putting into place the necessary legislations (Kimball and Bruce 89).The 1990’s saw the increase in financial aid to students inform of tuition discounting and this enabled more students to access highly competitive courses at the university. There has also been a remarkable change in the demographics of the students accessing higher education. While in the 1940’s it was mainly white males from high and middle socio economic back grounds the number of females, blacks and Asians accessing higher education has increased tremendously.
Education on the other hand has been seen as an equalizer. It has been seen to provide a chance for upward mobility.Howevor the reality is there has and continue to be a wide gap between the high income and low income children in acquisition of education. In America more students are accessing higher education than before. This includes children from the low income and middle class parents. Attaining a post-secondary school certificate has been seen to greatly increase the chances of accessing career opportunities. Much of this increase is attributed to public and community college institutions (Kimball and Bruce123).The elite schools have shown their importance in placing its graduates at a higher chance to thrive in the society with the majority of Supreme Court judges and former presidents having attended elite school. Prior to the elite school admission reforms of 1941 the access to these elite schools which include Yale, Harvard and Princeton was limited to students from a small group of people that had higher socio economic standing. This is because they sourced their students from a group of privately owned high cost boarding secondary schools that were largely out of reach of most people that came from a lower socio economic background. This meant that the social advantages and connections that a student derived from attending these elite schools was restricted to a small group of students that came from the higher socio economic background hence contributing to maintaining the status quo.From the early 1950’s graduates from the public schools increasingly outperformed the candidates from the private school and with the abandonment of the college board essay entry exams by the three big elite colleges and the colleges seeking expand their talent pool, they started admitting students from the public schools. This in effect opened the privileges and connections that were previously confined to the students from the higher socio economic background that previously were exclusively admitted to these schools to those students from lower socio economic background. Even with these changes the access to the elite colleges was still restricted with only few students from lower socio economic background that that showed exceptional academic potential and other extra talents such as prowess in athletics being granted admission coupled with financial assistance to pay for their education. On the other hand children of alumni of the elite schools gained automatic admission to the institutions hence perpetuation the socio economic advantages to the students from relatively rich backgrounds(Kimball and Bruce 145 ).From the late seventies the objective tests were introduced and these promoted fairness and democratic access to the elite colleges to all people irrespective of their socio economic background.Howevor the cost of education in these colleges remained prohibitive to most students from lower socio economic background and they only access education to these colleges through scholarships that are offered by the colleges based on the students’ academic and extra curriculum performance (Prince, Russ and Lewis 145).Elite universities continue to retain their position as being at the apex of giving students a better boost in their career by maintaining highly competitive entry requirements.
The role of the elite schools in providing social mobility provides surprising contradictions. America has over the ages prided itself in holding the belief that anyone can be the president yet half of all the presidents it has had in the last 110 years were alumni of Yale, Princeton or Harvard. Education attainment at the elite schools has increasingly been associated with economic success. The long history of racial discrimination locked out none whites from these elite schools but that has greatly changed in the last 50 years.Howevor the elite Universities still remain largely a privilege of the well to do in the society (Stevens, Gregory and Leiyu Shi 231) .Hence the role that the elite schools have played in providing social mobility is less compared to the other public and community Universities. There is a general agreement that acquisition of University Education gives children from disadvantaged socio economic background a chance for upward social mobility the contribution of the elite colleges is limited. Inequality in the society has generally been viewed as acceptable as long as it is accompanied with socio economic mobility. As much as more people are moving up the social ladder the inequalities are still glaring and it is becoming even harder for people from lower social class to jump from one economic class to the next. They hence find it harder to join the elite class. In an era in which money is equated to political power and political power has direct influence on the policies that a nation adopts then the disparities in the different socio economic classes will remain. In conclusion the few students from lower socio economic background that are able to access the elite colleges are not sufficient to tilt the gap between the rich and poor though they at a personal level are able to gain social economic mobility. Also as much as the expansion of higher education has opened opportunities for students from lower socio economic back ground and provided them with an opportunity to get access to better employment opportunities hence move up the social ladder the difference between the different socio economic classes still exist.
Work cited
Kimball, Bruce A. The "true Professional Ideal" in America: A History. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. Print.
Murray, Charles A. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 - 2010. New York, N.Y: Crown Forum, 2013. Print.
Prince, Russ A, and Lewis Schiff. The Middle-Class Millionaire: The Rise of the New Rich and How They Are Changing America. New York: Currency/Doubleday, 2008. Print.
Stevens, Gregory D, and Leiyu Shi. Vulnerable Populations in the United States. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass, 2013. Internet resource.
