The Cost of Inclusion – How Student Conformity Leads to Inequality on College Campuses

"Blake R. Silver's The Cost of Inclusion is a vivid portrayal of how inequality is produced in day-to-day interactions as students seek-and oftentimes don't find-belonging on campus. When choosing a college, students search for a social fit, a place to learn while also having fun. But what happens when students arrive on campus and enter this new social world? After a year spent immersed in student life on a college campus, Silver delves into this rich moment to explore the ways students seek out inclusion and a sense of belonging, illuminating the dynamics of college life as students look for their place-and frequently find themselves stuck-in a social landscape ruled by stereotypes and cookie-cutter identities. He explores the nature of the cookie-cutter self and its relation to raced and gendered cultural meanings, showing how each role students took on had a unique relationship to expressions of value, which could amplify or undermine feelings of belonging. He also lays out a framework for understanding how the inequality produced by adherence to the cookie-cutter self was maintained over time. Silver situates his findings in an ongoing conversation about the nature of higher education as a site for the contestation or reproduction of inequality, showing how understanding students' interaction in social groups provides insights into the ways inequality gets generated, even after challenges related to access have been overcome"--