The Burden of Academic Success

Allison Hurst has produced a sharp, insightful, and moving account of strategies working-class college students devise to maneuver the gulf between their own class cultures, identities, and communities and the decidedly middle-class cultures, orientations, and preoccupations of the institution where they study. Solidly linked to her rich interview data with working-class students in a four-year, moderately selective university, Hurst's much appreciated conclusion, deserves special mention. In it she explores a number of concrete changes in colleges and universities that would improve and invigorate the education of both working-class and middle-class students, as well as the lives of the vast majority of people in the U.S. who do not graduate from college. This volume will fill a big hole on class apparent in the reading lists of courses in schools of education and in multiple social science departments. -- Linda Fuller, University of Oregon
This fascinating book is an important addition to the growing body of scholarship on working-class students in the academy. Hurst's in-depth study reveals the different motives they have for attending college and the various strategies they use to negotiate the differences between the cultures of home and school. The Burden of Academic Success is essential reading for anyone concerned about higher education and social class. -- Michelle M. Tokarczyk, Goucher College