"Buying Into Selling Out: How Stanford Students Understand Corporate Career Funneling and Justify Their Decision to Participate"

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: The relationship between the job market and elite higher education is understudied in sociology. Some scholars have detailed the cultural and institutional mechanisms which funnel students into tech, finance, and consulting: today’s predominant prestigious post-grad jobs. However, none have captured how elite students understand corporate career funneling. This deficiency is critical in the context of class reproduction and inequality, specifically for understanding the process by which elite students stream into jobs at the top of the occupational hierarchy. To fill this gap, I use ethnographic observation and conduct in-depth interviews with graduating Stanford students from wealthy backgrounds entering tech, finance, or consulting. My interview respondents felt judged by their peers for their career choice, believing that some Stanford students would label them “sellouts.” The term “sellout” represents a moral symbolic boundary which Stanford upperclassmen use to distinguish themselves from their peers whose career choices they deem morally objectionable. However, most of my respondents did not self-identify as “sellouts” and instead employed justifications that redefined their relationship to the work or redefined the work itself in order to preserve their moral status. While these justifications do not necessarily give us insight into what motivates job choice, they carry concerning implications for inequality.

Author	Cieslikowski, Ryan
Thesis advisor	Kiviat, Barbara

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Preferred citation: Cieslikowski, R. (2023). "Buying Into Selling Out: How Stanford Students Understand Corporate Career Funneling and Justify Their Decision to Participate". Stanford Department of Sociology. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/vf432hp7574.

Stanford University, Department of Sociology, Co-terminal Master's thesis collection.

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