The Aspirational Class, Inconspicuous Consumption, and Higher Education

While running errands this weekend, I caught a segment of one of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain. The segment featured Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Southern California. Currid-Halkett researches, among other things, American consumer culture. In the segment, she describes some key insights from her recent book, The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. The podcast and book have multiple implications for higher education. After hearing the segment, my brain started firing about some of the less obvious ramifications for higher education of Currid-Halkett’s ideas.

As the title of her book suggests, Currid-Halkett argues that a dominant, cultural elite has emerged, which she terms the “aspirational class.” As something of an update to Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, Currid-Halkett contends that this class is not defined primarily by income, but rather by “collective consciousness upheld by specific values and acquired knowledge and the rarefied social and cultural processes necessary to acquire them” (p. 18). The primary characteristic unifying this new elite is valuing and acquiring knowledge, and the process by which they obtain knowledge and form values is what reveals their social position. Basically, if we subscribe to the idea that we’re living in a global knowledge economy, knowledge and its acquisition through education and other activities becomes a type of currency to signal status both materially and symbolically.

Members of this class aspire to use cultural capital and knowledge to make better “decisions around what to eat, how to treat the environment, and how to be better parents, more productive workers, and more informed consumers” (p. 18). The ways in which people enter the aspirational class and signal social position influences consumption. Veblen’s “leisure class” engaged in “conspicuous consumption,” buying things and participating in activities that were utterly nonfunctional and wasteful to signal social position. By contrast, the aspirational class engages in “inconspicuous consumption,” spending heavily on education, organic food, nannies, yoga classes, retirement, and health care. Underlying this inconspicuous consumption is the belief among aspirational class members that their spending is for the good of society. However, as Currid-Halkett explains on Hidden Brain: “These behaviors and practices reinforce their privilege and reinforce the privilege of their children in a way that superficial material goods don't pass on from generation to generation.”

So, what does Currid-Halkett’s theory of the aspirational class and their inconspicuous consumption habits have to do with higher education? A number of things, some more obvious than others.

The most obvious, of course, is that graduating from college (what Veblen considered “conspicuous leisure” among the ultra wealthy) is now a prerequisite for membership in this dominant, cultural elite. In the words of Currid-Halkett: “Mobility into the top echelon of the new world order is reliant on acquisition of knowledge, not birthright, not property held for generations, and not, sadly for many, loyalty to one’s work institution” (p. 17). Extending Currid-Halkett’s ideas just a little further, we might say that within the aspirational class, more education signals greater acquisition of knowledge, which equates to greater social status. This sheds light on increasing numbers of people pursuing graduate education.

If one of the ways in which the aspirational class signals social position is spending on education, it is possible that spending hefty amounts on college tuition within this group is a status play. In other words, among a certain group of people, spending a fortune on a private institution is desirable because it establishes their social position. Members of the aspirational class don’t want a cheap public college. Sure, they may outwardly complain at dinner parties about what they are paying for their child’s tuition. But this complain-brag serves a signaling purpose. It is possible that some elite private schools, acknowledging this segment of society, have pursued high tuition prices precisely because they understand the symbolic value of paying such significant sums on education among the aspirational class. Certain public colleges, including some of the elite research universities, work hard to recruit talented, non-resident students. Rather than be associated with affordable public colleges, they may be pricing themselves ever closer to elite private schools to attract the aspirational class.

The aspirational class may also be shaping campuses and the curricular/co-curricular experiences offered to students. Given the aspirational class’s penchant for spending on wellness and sustainable agriculture, we might expect to see campuses investing heavily on recreational centers and wellness centers, offering a full range of pilates classes. Additionally, we might anticipate that campus dining options shift in the direction of locally-sourced, organic produce and products. As Currid-Halkett notes, it’s difficult to critique spending on these things. We might even say they contribute to the good of society. However, pilates classes and organic peaches aren’t cheap. It’s possible that the consumer preferences of the aspirational class are making many aspects of the college experience more expensive for all students, including low-income students more preoccupied with survival than yoga.

My guess is that the aspirational class is best positioned to take advantage of campus offerings like internships and study abroad, two activities that we perhaps might not readily associate with social status. Nevertheless, these two activities often require significant resources. Many summer internships are unpaid, requiring that college students have resources to pay living costs, often in expensive cities, to participate in them. Study abroad programs often entail program fees, flights, and other costs that make them prohibitively expensive for the majority of college students. In order to promote participation, colleges could be investing to subsidize and reduce the costs associated with these experiences. Instead, I see far more colleges and universities utilizing internships and study abroad as marketing tools, perhaps in a strategic move to speak the language of the aspirational class.

In short, I can foresee a number of ways in which certain colleges and universities have shifted to become hubs of the aspirational class, and this shift, in turn, has made them inaccessible to other groups lacking the resources required to enter this new elite. My colleague, Andy Ryder, and I have tackled similar issues in our work on students’ spending, sense of belonging, and campus climate for affordability (see here and here). But I think there is more work to be done at the intersection of higher education and the changing patterns of American consumer culture.