ABOUT THIS BOOK

An ethnographic analysis of how insecurity is at the heart of contemporary higher education.

Institutions of higher education are often described as “ivory towers,” places of privilege where students exist in a “campus bubble,” insulated from the trials of the outside world. These metaphors reveal a widespread belief that college provides young people with stability and keeps insecurity at bay. But for many students, that’s simply not the case.

Degrees of Risk reveals how insecurity permeates every facet of college life for students at public universities. Sociologist Blake Silver dissects how these institutions play a direct role in perpetuating uncertainty, instability, individualism, and anxiety about the future. Silver examined interviews with more than one hundred students who described the risks that surrounded every decision: which major to choose, whether to take online classes, and how to find funding. He expertly identified the ways the college experience played out differently for students from different backgrounds. For students from financially secure families with knowledge of how college works, all the choices and flexibility of college felt like an adventure or a wealth of opportunities. But for many others, especially low-income, first-generation students, their personal and family circumstances meant that that flexibility felt like murkiness and precarity. In addition, he discovered that students managed insecurity in very different ways, intensifying inequality at the intersections of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other sociodemographic dimensions. Drawing from these firsthand accounts, Degrees of Risk presents a model for a better university, one that fosters success and confidence for a diverse range of students.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Blake R. Silver is associate professor of sociology at George Mason University, where he also serves as director of educational pathways and faculty development in the Honors College. He is the author of The Cost of Inclusion: How Student Conformity Leads to Inequality on College Campuses, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

REVIEWS

“Silver delivers on this deep ethnographic exploration into the everyday experiences of students as they grapple with inequality on college campuses. Students’ resiliency may actually heighten risk and insecurity in fascinatingly troubling ways. Upwardly mobile students find themselves in precarious social standings that few overcome without accruing more debt and succumbing to an inequitable education system. The social and cultural capital gap and how it drives insecurity is paramount. This book is important for those aiming to understand the depths of how inequality seeps into higher education.”

— Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland

"College, once a path to stability, is now filled with uncertainty and anxiety. How students navigate this new reality is the focus of Silver’s engrossing book. Poignant and alarming, Degrees of Risk presents college as minefield rather than bubble, with students acting as risk minimizers and opportunity maximizers rather than passionate explorers. A must-read!"

— Joanne W. Golan, Vanderbilt University

"This important and well-researched book illuminates the precarity and insecurity many students face in navigating the pathway to a college degree. With important lessons for scholars and higher education administrators, Silver reveals how current institutional emphases on unstructured student choice and flexibility, alongside invisible, inaccessible or disconnected student support services, often impede students’ progress, particularly those least advantaged."

— Ann Mullen, University of Toronto, Scarborough

"Degrees of Risk forces us to grapple with just how precarious the paths to and through college have become. Through rich interviews with students making their way through college at one of the most tumultuous times in history, Silver captures the trials and triumphs of investing in education. Central throughout this important work is a dual invitation: to interrogate what makes our campuses so unequal and to do something about it."

— Anthony Abraham Jack, author of 'The Privileged Poor'

TABLE OF CONTENTS