cultural capital

cultural capital

Cultural Capital

According to Pierre Bourdieu, culture capital is the knowledge about the elite culture, which is used as an asset for a student to help them get into a prestigious college (p. 47).   In the article “Chess, Cheerleading, Chopin: What Gets You into College,” it talks about what college admission offices, whether prestigious or state, are looking for in prospective students.   Typically people think that admission offices are looking for students to be very involved with community service and have many extracurricular activities under their belt as possible.   But this article explains that there are also other key components that make a prospect stand out more than their competitor.   College representatives are looking for the “best” people to represent their schools, so things like having experience playing a piano, frequenting art galleries, and listening to classical music are a big up to college scouts.   This is an example of what Bourdieu was talking about with culture capital because he believes that the more worldly and affluent a student and their parents are, the more likely they are to be enrolled in a university, especially private.
I believe that this concept is used for both state and private school enrollment because every school wants the best candidate to represent their institution, even if the particular school isn’t historically known for its academic achievements.   The whole purpose of culture capital is to help admission offices to pick students who are more culturally inclined so that when the student comes to that university, they are ready to take on the vigorous course load of college.   If you take Penn State for example; they use culture capital as a part of admissions because they have a standard that they want/have to uphold, so for them to even consider a student they must be already exposed to fine arts and classical music. But take Radford; now, Radford may use culture capital to better or diversify their...