Connecting in College

How Friendship Networks Matter for Academic and Social Success

Janice M. McCabe

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780226409528, 9780226409498
• eBook ISBN: 9780226409665
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

We all know that good study habits, supportive parents, and engaged instructors are all keys to getting good grades in college. But as Janice M. McCabe shows in this illuminating study, there is one crucial factor determining a student's academic success that most of us tend to overlook: who they hang out with. Surveying a range of different kinds of college friendships, Connecting in College details the fascinatingly complex ways students' social and academic lives intertwine and how students attempt to balance the two in their pursuit of straight As, good times, or both.
           
As McCabe and the students she talks to show, the friendships we forge in college are deeply meaningful, more meaningful than we often give them credit for. They can also vary widely. Some students have only one tight-knit group, others move between several, and still others seem to meet someone new every day. Some students separate their social and academic lives, while others rely on friendships to help them do better in their coursework. McCabe explores how these dynamics lead to different outcomes and how they both influence and are influenced by larger factors such as social and racial inequality. She then looks toward the future and how college friendships affect early adulthood, ultimately drawing her findings into a set of concrete solutions to improve student experiences and better guarantee success in college and beyond.

FOUR

Compartmentalizers

Compartmentalizers are students with middle-density networks—where roughly half their friends know each other—containing distinct clusters of friends. Their networks usually have two or three clusters; a few have four clusters. These clusters might be composed of friends from a first-year dorm who proofread each other’s papers, friends from an academic club who provide emotional support regarding academics, and friends from home who party together. Within each cluster, compartmentalizers’ friends are tightly connected, but friends rarely know each other across clusters. Nearly all compartmentalizers discussed friends as helping them balance their academic and social lives. Friends helped in two ways: (1) through different clusters of friends being involved in students’ academic and social lives in different ways, which I refer to as “segmented academic involvement,” and (2) through friends who provide multiple forms of academic assistance, what I referred to earlier as “academic multiplex ties.”1 According to whether each of these two features was present or absent, compartmentalization exhibited four patterns, as shown in table 4.1.

Students’ backgrounds are not monolithic across these four patterns in how friends helped. Most compartmentalizers are white and middle- or upper-class, and this is especially true for compartmentalizers whose networks had either segmented academic involvement or academic multiplex ties. Students from these more privileged backgrounds seemed able to balance their academic and social lives with only one of these features. Most said that making friends was easy because they perceived most people around them as “like me.” Even when they discussed problems making friends when they first arrived at MU, they were able to solve this pretty easily, often by joining a particular organization, as shown in Mary’s story (see below). In contrast, black and Latino compartmentalizers and those from lower-class backgrounds balanced their academic and social lives with both segmented academic involvement and academic multiplex ties. When friends helped in both these ways, compartmentalized networks helped students cope with racial- and class-based social marginality, unlike the samplers discussed in the next chapter. This is another example of how networks matter for students’ experiences and have the potential to decrease existing inequalities. In the following sections, I discuss how Mary was academically and socially successful with a compartmentalized network, while Julia was less successful and lacked academically focused ties.

Table 4.1 Selected characteristics of compartmentalizers

Name	Graduated from MU	GPA	Race/Ethnicity	Gender	Class	First-Gen.	ACT	No. of Friends	Groups in Network	Academic Instrumental, Emotional, or Intellectual Involvement from Friends
										From Different Groups: Segmented Academic Involvement	From the Same Group: Academic Multiplex Ties
Segmented academic involvement:
Lacking academic multiplex ties:
Beth	Yes	3.7	White	Woman	Middle	No	24	23	3	Yes	No
Vanessa	Yes	3.7	White	Woman	Upper	No	25	19	2	Yes	No
Mary	Yes	3.5	White	Woman	Middle	No	28	17	2	Yes	No
Logan	Yes	3.5	White	Man	Middle	No	23	35	3	Yes	No
Greg	Yes	3.4	White	Man	Middle	No	26	15	2	Yes	No
Krystal	Yes	3.4	White	Woman	Middle	No	29	16	2	Yes	No
Heather	Yes	3.3	White	Woman	Middle	No	29	31	3	Yes	No
Maddie	Yes	3.2	White	Woman	Upper	No	26	24	2	Yes	No
Jenny	Yes	2.9	White	Woman	Middle	No	26	15	3	Yes	No
Betsy	Yes	2.8	White	Woman	Upper	Yes	21	17	2	Yes	No
Fran	Yes	2.8	White	Woman	Middle	Yes	20	27	4	Yes	No
With academic multiplex ties:
Natalie	Yes	3.8	White	Woman	Lower	Yes	24	10	2	Yes	One
Daniel	Yes	3.8	White	Man	Lower	No	31	16	2	Yes	Multiple
Jason	Yes	3.7	Latino	Man	Lower	Yes	28	29	4	Yes	One
Michelle	Yes	3.7	White	Woman	Middle	No	23	13	2	Yes	Multiple
Ruth	Yes	3.7	White	Woman	Middle	No	27	19	3	Yes	Multiple
Juan	Yes	3.6	Latino	Man	Lower	Yes	25	16	2	Yes	One
Wendy	Yes	3.3	Black	Woman	Middle	No	21	18	3	Yes	Multiple
Liz	Yes	3.3	White	Woman	Lower	No	27	13	2	Yes	Multiple
Abby	Yes	3.2	White	Woman	Upper	No	27	18	3	Yes	Multiple
Whitney	Yes	2.8	White	Woman	Lower	Yes	26	30	3	Yes	Multiple
Jim	Yes	2.8	White	Man	Middle	Yes	26	30	3	Yes	Multiple
Academic multiplex ties, lacking segmented academic involvement:
Noleen	Yes	3.8	White	Woman	Middle	Yes	23	11	3	No	Multiple
Kathryn	Yes	3.7	White	Woman	Upper	No	28	40	2	No	Multiple ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• ONE / Friendship
• TWO / Balance
• THREE / Tight-Knitters
• FOUR / Compartmentalizers
• FIVE / Samplers
• SIX / Friendships after College
• SEVEN / Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Methodological Appendix: Researching Friendships on One College Campus
• Notes
• References
• Index