How social class shapes college student support systems

The Challenge

Relationships with parents are a powerful yet often hidden source of inequality among college students. While research documents social-class differences in the support parents can provide, we know less about how students decide whether to rely on parental help or how they understand their obligations to family. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an ideal context to examine these dynamics, yielding insights crucial for designing university policies that promote greater equity and better support students’ diverse needs.

Research Approach

I designed a qualitative interview study to examine how undergraduates from different social class backgrounds navigated the transition to remote instruction in 2020, with a focus on parents’ roles. I interviewed 48 working-class and upper-middle-class undergraduates from an elite residential university in the American Northeast, along with 10 mothers (five from each class group). The interviews explored students’ housing trajectories, decision-making processes, interactions with parents, and understandings of parental authority and family obligations during the pandemic.

Key insights

Insight 1: Privileged Dependence vs. Precarious Autonomy

In this period of heightened fear and uncertainty, upper-middle-class students typically turned to parents for security and reassurance—a pattern I call “privileged dependence.” In contrast, working-class students demonstrated “precarious autonomy” as they tried to figure things out on their own. Some even provided help to other family members along the way.

Two factors drove these differences: class differences in students’ understandings of parental authority, and class differences in the weight students gave to family members’ needs and interests. Together, these factors shaped decisions about where to live and how to interact with families.

Insight 2: Who Decides What to Do?

Upper-middle-class students generally saw their parents as having the final say over major life decisions, whereas working-class students typically felt they could decide for themselves. These different perceptions of parents’ authority shaped how students responded to pandemic-related disruptions, especially housing decisions when universities instructed students to vacate campus in March 2020.

Gladly or grudgingly, upper-middle-class students typically followed parents’ directions for travel, housing, and safety precautions. One reason was financial leverage—these parents were paying all or most of their children’s college expenses. Many upper-middle-class students also thought their parents “knew more” than they did.

In contrast, few working-class students expected their parents to tell them what was safe or thought it necessary to gain parents’ approval for housing choices. In working-class families, parents often had little to no financial leverage. Some working-class students withheld information about their plans from parents, either to spare them worry or to avoid hearing their opinions.

Insight 3: Different Decision Factors

In addition to shaping the balance of power, social class shaped which factors students weighed when deciding where to live and how to interact with parents. Whereas upper-middle-class students emphasized the comfort and protection that parents could provide for them, working-class students actively considered parents’ needs and vulnerabilities.

Many working-class students expressed a sense of responsibility to protect their parents from COVID-19 exposure, to provide financial support, or to help care for other family members. For example, one working-class student described running the household—shopping, cooking, and managing her younger siblings’ remote schooling—while her mom worked retail. She used her own money to supplement the grocery budget and purchase learning supplies and toys for her siblings.

In contrast, many upper-middle-class students described their parents cooking meals, doing laundry, ensuring that chores didn’t interfere with academics, providing academic advice and assistance, purchasing learning technology, upgrading the home WiFi, and in one case, even hiring an in-person tutor.

Insight 4: Mechanisms of Inequality

There were clear short-term benefits to upper-middle-class students’ dependence on parents during the pandemic. Whereas many upper-middle-class students were maintaining or even building savings while living with parents, many working-class students described struggling to make ends meet. And while upper-middle-class students typically enjoyed protected time and quiet workspaces, working-class students encountered more caregiving responsibilities and environmental distractions.

Upper-middle-class parents’ greater socioeconomic resources and the shared assumption that students would continue to rely on these resources protected upper-middle-class students from a variety of financial and academic disruptions. These protections may yield longer-term payoffs, thus amplifying inequalities between students.

Applications for Higher Education Policy and Practice

1. Don’t Assume Parental Safety Nets. Students’ support needs and resources vary significantly, even within the undergraduate student population. Institutional policies should not assume parents’ resources or homes will serve as automatic safety nets during crises—yet universities designed for “traditional” students (living on campus, financially supported by parents) often make exactly this assumption.

2. Many Students Are Family Caregivers, Too. Contrary to the popular idea of college as a time of self-focused exploration, some students, especially those from less advantaged class backgrounds, support their families. The pandemic increased many students’ caregiving responsibilities, but individual families experience crises large and small that create support needs—students send money home, help siblings with homework, assist parents with digital technology, and chauffeur medical appointments. Such responsibilities are often invisible to university instructors and administrators. Creating more inclusive classrooms will require instructors to demonstrate awareness, empathy, and flexibility around these differences.