Money Matters: How Social Class Shapes Students’ Understandings of Financing Their Education

Abstract

Higher education is increasingly expensive, and access disparities by race and social class exist. Yet, we lack nuance in the scholarly literature about students’ understandings of how they finance their college education. We examine how class-based differences influence how students finance college education. We draw on concepts from economic sociology and sensemaking to examine how class backgrounds shape students’ meaning-making of finance and funding their college education. Through interviews with 56 community college students, we examine what money means to students and how that varies across classes, with implications for transfer decisions and outcomes. We surface important implications for students’ behaviors and decisions in college.