Paying for the Party

Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality is a 2013 book by sociologists Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton. Published by Harvard University Press, Paying for the Party is based on a five-year ethnographic study at an unnamed public flagship university in the Midwestern United States. In Paying for the Party, the authors report that students followed one of three "pathways" at the university: the professional pathway, the mobility pathway, or the party pathway.[1][2][3]

Paying for the Party was preceded by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's 2011 book Academically Adrift, which focused on stagnating academic development of American undergraduate students.[4][3] Armstrong and Hamilton had originally planned to study sexuality; they later chose to focus on social class "based on what they saw".[5] While Armstrong and Hamilton used the pseudonym Midwestern University (MU), readers identified the study site as Indiana University due to the book's mention of the school's unique Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design.[5][6]

The book received the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Book Award in 2015.[7] A reviewer for The Review of Higher Education said the book was "persuasive and much needed", but flawed due to the authors' "underdeveloped anthropological assumptions [which] fail to muster a critique capable of truly challenging the behavior of Indiana University's Kappa Delta sorority and the comparable, or even worse, behavior of other Greek organizations".[8] A favorable review from Research & Practice in Assessment called the study "an exemplar of qualitative, ethnographic research in higher education", writing that "the party pathway described in the text clearly dominated at the institution in the study and likely dominates on many college campuses across the country".[2] Reviewing Paying for the Party for the politically conservative organization National Association of Scholars, Amy Wax and Isaac N. Cohen called the book "engrossing and well-written" but stated its "fatal flaw" was in its focus on wealthy sorority members who made up a minority of students at the university.[9]

References

  1. ^ Jaquette, Ozan (May 2017). State University No More: Out-of-State Enrollment and the Growing Exclusion of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students at Public Flagship Universities (PDF) (Report). Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
  2. ^ a b Martin, Georgianna L. (2014). "Book Review: Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality" (PDF). Research & Practice in Assessment. 9.
  3. ^ a b Grasgreen, Allie. "'Paying for the Party'". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved September 4, 2025.
  4. ^ Paul, Annie Murphy (January 23, 2013). "Does College Put Kids on a 'Party Pathway'?". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved September 4, 2025.
  5. ^ a b Lewin, Tamar (August 2, 2013). "Class Warfare Along Partygoer Lines". The New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2025.
  6. ^ Leef, George (April 30, 2014). "A Revealing Look at a State Flagship". The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Archived from the original on May 2, 2013. Retrieved September 4, 2025.
  7. ^ "Distinguished Scholarly Book Award | American Sociological Association". American Sociological Association. Archived from the original on July 8, 2025. Retrieved February 10, 2026.
  8. ^ Ream, Todd C. (2014). "Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality by Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura T. Hamilton (review)". The Review of Higher Education. 37 (2): 284–286. ISSN 1090-7009.
  9. ^ Wax, Amy L.; Cohen, Isaac N. (March 2014). "And We Shall Not All Be Dentists". Academic Questions. 27 (1): 103–110. doi:10.1007/s12129-013-9404-1. ISSN 0895-4852.
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