The Party Pathway
Part two of our University Press Week look at the books selected by the Chronicle of Higher Education’s most influential books of the last twenty years is Playing for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton. The book was selected by Amy Binder, who called it “beautifully written, knitting together themes of social class, gender, sexuality, organizations, and education, the book is destined to be a classic.” Here’s a bit from the introduction discussing one of the pathways they identify for students: the party pathway.
When the university structures the interests of a constituency into its organizational edifice, we say that it has created a “pathway.” Pathways are simultaneously social and academic and coordinate all aspects of the university experience. Just as roads are built for types of vehicles, pathways are built for types of students. The party pathway is provisioned to support the affluent and socially oriented; the mobility pathway is designed for the pragmatic and vocationally oriented; and the professional pathway fits ambitious students from privileged families.
The party pathway is built around an implicit agreement between the university and students to demand little of each other. Extremely affluent students with middling academic credentials are the ideal candidates. They cost the university the least, as they are not eligible for need-based aid, are less competitive for merit scholarships, do not demand much time with faculty, and do not require remedial assistance. Legacy policies (some- times referred to as “affirmative action for the rich”) and comparatively low academic standards make it easier for universities to admit more of these students.
Murray Sperber, in his 2000 book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education, suggests that students are, in essence, bribed with “beer and circus” in exchange for minimal contact with faculty and low academic demands. Yet, “beer and circus” is exactly what some affluent students seek. Building the social side of the party pathway involves creating big-time sports teams and facilities, as well as other “recreational” aspects of student life (for example, fitness and student centers). It means establishing ways of policing student revelry that protect life, property, and reputation without putting too much of a damper on student socializing. Most centrally, it requires solving the puzzle of how to systematically, and in large-scale fashion, generate “fun.”
Sororities and fraternities are often part of the solution: umbrella organizations at both local and national levels ease the planning of campus- wide social events. Universities can further support these organizations by allowing them to operate on campus, facilitating purchase of property on university grounds, and exempting them from rigorous policing. In doing so, schools provide a way for affluent, white, socially oriented students to isolate themselves from their less privileged peers. They also ensure that such students have the organizational infrastructure necessary for their sexual and romantic projects — fraternities sponsor an erotic marketplace in which students gain status and make connections through “hooking up.” By pairing opposite-sex houses for events, Greek organizations engineer this process, effectively creating what demographers call “endogamy” or “homogamy” — pairing like with like or, in this case, affluent white women with affluent white men.
Regardless of how much students value fun and socializing, few of their parents would pay tuition without at least the promise of some academic edification. Classes and grades legitimate the college experience. Yet serious scholarship is time-consuming. This produces a conundrum: How can students have a primarily social experience without failing academically? Universities have solved the problem by allowing easy majors to develop.
In his contribution to The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University, Steven Brint refers to these majors as “the practical arts” or “occupational and professional programs often housed in their own schools and colleges.” They include business, public administration, communications, tourism, recreation studies, education, human development, fitness, and fashion, among others. Easy majors contrast with the more challenging sciences and humanities that are generally part of colleges of arts and sciences. They are associated with higher overall GPAs and less measurable learning.78 In many — although not all — easy majors, career success depends on personal characteristics developed outside of the classroom, even prior to college. For example, appearance, personality, and social ties matter at least as much — if not more — than GPA for media, sports, or fashion careers.
A developed party pathway requires that easy majors be richly variegated, with many possible sub-subspecialties, ways to opt out of challenging requirements (for example, language, science, and math classes), and schedules compatible with partying (that is, no Friday classes). When a party pathway is robust, these majors are well advertised, recommended by advisors, and generally supported by the school.
