‘Cultural Capital’ Needs To Be At The Center Of Your College Decision_ Expert _ Forbes College Hacks
Dr. Marcus Collins, author and marketing professor at the University of Michigan, joins Forbes to discuss the importance of considering "cultural capital" when making the crucial decision of where to go to college.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi, I'm Allie Jackson Jolly.
00:04 I'm here with Dr. Marcus Collins,
00:06 who is a clinical associate professor of marketing,
00:10 as well as the author of his book for the culture,
00:13 the power behind what we buy, what we do,
00:16 and who we wanna be.
00:17 Welcome.
00:18 - Thanks for having me here.
00:19 - Yeah, no, I'm excited about this one,
00:22 because I wanted to have you here to talk about
00:25 the cost of college,
00:29 and how students and college consumers
00:33 should be thinking about making good investments,
00:36 smart money, right?
00:37 - Yeah, I like that, college consumers,
00:39 because we are consuming college as a branded product.
00:44 - Something that's been making me think
00:46 about college consumers thinking about themselves
00:49 more as consumers who get to decide what they're buying
00:54 and how that's serving them well,
00:56 was a recent bit of reporting that was done
00:59 by one of our journalists here,
01:01 who found out that half of college seniors
01:06 have said that they will not apply and go to colleges
01:10 that cost more than $40,000 a year.
01:13 That says to me that the consumer has spoken,
01:17 and that they want a good return on their investment.
01:21 - Yeah, yeah, they're thinking about the net present value
01:24 of their investment, right?
01:25 So I invest today, what does it mean on the back end?
01:28 I guess the calculus they're doing is that
01:30 if I invest X amount of money over these four years,
01:34 what's the likelihood of me getting the return on that?
01:37 - That's exactly right, that's what the piece said.
01:40 And interestingly though, you said to me
01:44 that one thing you think college kids should think about
01:46 when they do that calculus, to borrow your word,
01:49 is something called cultural capital.
01:53 Can you explain to me what cultural capital is,
01:55 and why you think college students
01:57 should be thinking about this more?
01:58 - So cultural capital is an idea that came
02:01 from a sociologist named Pierre Berdue.
02:03 And the idea of cultural capital is,
02:05 this is the currency in which we evaluate
02:10 the things that are around us,
02:12 as a way of signifying who we are.
02:15 And he talks about cultural capital in three different ways,
02:17 three different forms of cultural capital.
02:19 The first form of cultural capital
02:20 is embodied cultural capital.
02:23 Which speaks to the skills that we have.
02:26 I.e., if you can sing, if you can play an instrument,
02:30 or if you've read the classics in literature,
02:34 the Odyssey, Homer and the Odyssey.
02:36 If you know a foreign language, if you are equestrian.
02:41 The idea is that knowing these skills
02:43 or having these skills signals something about yourself.
02:46 For instance, if you said,
02:48 "Ale, Marcus, what did you do growing up?"
02:49 And I said, "Well, I rode horses when I was growing up."
02:52 You probably think, "Oh, Marcus comes from a lot of means."
02:55 Because that's a signal of wealth.
02:58 And the idea is that these embodied cultural capital,
03:01 these skills that we have,
03:03 become ways of signaling kind of who we are in the world.
03:07 Like the space that we occupy,
03:09 we demarcate ourselves from the rest of the world.
03:11 And the notion is that,
03:13 I meet other people who have these skills,
03:15 and therefore it opens up economic opportunity for me.
03:19 Right?
03:20 It's like rich people hang out with rich people.
03:21 These signals become ways of signaling who we are
03:24 on the social economic status.
03:25 Therefore, cultural capital provides access
03:28 to economic capital.
03:29 That's the first form of social, of cultural capital.
03:33 The second form of cultural capital,
03:34 he refers to as objectified cultural capital,
03:36 which is far more intuitive.
03:38 The idea is that the things that we wear,
03:40 the objects, the artifacts that we consume,
03:44 are ways by which we achieve an identity project,
03:49 kind of peacocking to the world who we are.
03:51 - So that one reminds me of the bumper stickers
03:56 we put on our cars.
03:58 We go to what we think of as an elite college,
04:01 our college that we're proud of.
04:02 We put the bumper sticker on our car,
04:04 we wear our baseball caps,
04:06 we buy mom and dad sweatshirts that say,
04:08 proud parent of a William and Mary grad,
04:11 because that was my alma mater.
04:13 - That's right.
04:14 So the idea is that our consumption
04:16 in these tangible things,
04:17 become ways by signifying or signaling
04:19 where we are in the social economic status.
04:21 The car we drive, the clothes that we wear,
04:24 these things signal something about us.
04:26 And the notion is that if you drive a fancy car,
04:28 you see someone else driving a fancy car,
04:30 you think, oh, we are one in the same,
04:32 we are of the same tribe, as one may say,
04:36 and therefore we're more inclined to open up opportunities
04:40 so then that lead to economic gains, right?
04:42 Economic capital, financial capital.
04:46 So you got this, you got embodied cultural capital,
04:49 which is about skill,
04:49 you have objectified cultural capital,
04:51 which is about the objects that we consume.
04:53 And then there's a thing that you are signaling to,
04:55 the third form of cultural capital,
04:57 according to Pierre Berdue,
04:59 is institutional cultural capital.
05:02 And this is the companies we work for,
05:05 this speaks to the organizations that we're a part of.
05:08 I remember growing up, if you were in Jack and Jill,
05:10 it's like, oh, excuse me, Jack and Jill, right?
05:13 Say something about who you are
05:15 and the schools that we go to, right?
05:17 These schools become brands that signal who we are,
05:21 where we sit in the socioeconomic status,
05:23 which gives us access to more financial opportunities.
05:28 Just like you would tell another friend
05:30 or someone who's just like you about a job
05:32 or an investment opportunity,
05:34 these things come from where we find people like ourselves,
05:39 based on how we signal, whether it's through embodied,
05:42 objectified or institutional.
05:44 And the notion here is that college, universities,
05:47 become both a form of institutionalized cultural capital
05:52 and objectified cultural capital based on me wearing gear.
05:58 You've probably seen studies before,
05:59 people wear Harvard shirts who didn't even go to Harvard
06:02 as a way of signaling something about themselves.
06:04 That are implications of our embodied cultural capital.
06:08 You must be smart if you went to this school
06:11 and it's signified by what you wear.
06:13 So if you had a, if you could look into the future,
06:18 based on those stats that I just told you,
06:21 which is that fewer people are wanting to pay big dollars,
06:25 or really what the study found was that
06:27 students are afraid of big debt, right?
06:30 So do you think that one of those pieces of cultural capital
06:35 will become less important
06:39 and others will become more important?
06:41 Or how do you think the framing of that
06:44 will play out over the next few years?
06:46 - Well, I think that if the calculus is that
06:49 paying for this institutional experience is not worth it,
06:54 then we're looking at what the
06:56 institutional cultural capital provides.
06:58 But what each one of these forms of cultural capital
07:01 are leading to is financial gain.
07:04 And the proxy between the skill, the object,
07:08 the institution is the people.
07:10 And it's really sort of what you end up paying for,
07:13 or at least that's kind of what we're getting access to.
07:16 Then not just the professors, but it's the people,
07:18 the network that I'm going to be a part of,
07:22 that I'm able to tap into,
07:23 that allow for these doors
07:25 that normally aren't open to me, right?
07:27 It's because I go to this school
07:29 that I can call a Michigan alum,
07:31 they'll answer the phone and perhaps give me a job
07:33 or introduce me to someone else that may invest in my idea.
07:37 That's the benefit of institutional cultural capital.
07:40 That is, it opens up to financial gain.
07:43 You know, if I'm rocking some really cool sneakers,
07:46 and someone goes, "Oh, you must be into sneakers."
07:48 So I can tell the colorway and the vintage,
07:50 whatever, fill in the blank.
07:52 They go, "You should hang out with us
07:53 'cause we're doing these things."
07:54 They open up doors to opportunities.
07:57 The same thing goes that if I speak a foreign language,
07:59 someone goes, "Oh, you have a really good pronunciation
08:02 "of your French.
08:03 "You should meet so-and-so."
08:04 And they create other opportunities.
08:06 That's what the capital is.
08:08 The capital is driven by social capital,
08:12 which then turns into economic capital.
08:14 So the calculus, I think, is far more complicated,
08:17 far more complex than,
08:19 am I gonna get this job tomorrow when I graduate?
08:22 But rather, am I gonna meet people
08:25 that are gonna open up the world to me
08:26 that normally would not be available to me?
08:28 That's really hard to quantify.
08:30 - Okay, so let's pretend you're my financial advisor.
08:32 - Okay. (laughs)
08:33 - And I am a college senior getting ready to go to college.
08:37 Knowing what you just spoke to me about,
08:40 cultural capital as a return on investment,
08:44 and the network, potential of networking,
08:48 how do I look to make sure a college is doing that?
08:53 What are the signals that I may get a good return
08:58 on my investment around cultural capital and networking?
09:01 - Well, so I think there are a few indicators,
09:03 indices that we can think about.
09:05 One, we can look at the people who occupy the places
09:08 where we wanna work, where we wanna be in the world.
09:12 What schools do they come from?
09:13 Because the notion is that
09:15 institutionalized cultural capital
09:16 is giving me access to people who are of this network.
09:19 Well, where's the network?
09:21 Are they doing the things that I wanna do?
09:22 Which is why you see people go to certain schools
09:26 to be in certain sectors.
09:27 People go entrepreneurship for an MBA,
09:29 for instance, will go to Stanford.
09:30 People who wanna go in media and entertainment,
09:32 they may go to Stern.
09:33 People who may wanna go into finance,
09:36 maybe they go to Booth, I don't know.
09:39 If you wanna just be dope, you go to University of Michigan.
09:42 But I'm serious though.
09:43 Anyway, so the notion is that we go to the places
09:46 where people like people who we wanna be have been
09:50 in hopes that I'm now being plugged into the network.
09:54 How do you quantify that?
09:55 It's not really sure.
09:56 But I think what I would ask,
09:58 or what I would ask the student
09:59 if I were the financial advisor is,
10:01 what do you want to get out of this thing that we call life?
10:05 Not just what do you want after the four years,
10:07 but what do you want the four years
10:09 after the four years after the four years?
10:11 'Cause one thing about my career,
10:13 I started as an engineer.
10:14 And I realized pretty early on
10:17 that I didn't wanna be an engineer.
10:18 My parents didn't care,
10:19 so I could see that engineering degree.
10:22 And after engineering, I went into the music business.
10:24 And financially, it was not a good return.
10:28 I ended up going to business school later to get my MBA,
10:31 which was a very hefty investment
10:33 that my parents weren't gonna foot the bill on.
10:35 It was all on me.
10:37 And when I came out of the MBA program in 2008,
10:39 in the middle of a recession, mind you,
10:41 I came out with no job, no leads, and 116 grand in debt.
10:45 And you go, what?
10:47 Like that calculus is terrible.
10:49 Like every person who think about going to MBA program
10:52 are fretting right now.
10:53 But you fast forward 10 years after that,
10:57 I'm in a completely different place.
10:59 Not just because of me dispositionally,
11:01 it's because of the networks I've been able to tap into,
11:05 the relations I've been able to cultivate
11:07 because of this institutionalized cultural capital
11:09 that we call universities, right?
11:11 And because of the embodied cultural capital,
11:13 the universities helped me excavate these skills.
11:16 They helped me excavate.
11:17 I don't dress to the nines.
11:18 I don't know if objectified is there,
11:20 but certainly embodied and institutional.
11:23 And over the long run,
11:24 as we look at the time horizon
11:26 in which we benefit from school,
11:29 it changes the calculus.
11:30 If it's just four years,
11:32 then I don't know if that's the right way
11:35 or the right frame to think about college.
11:37 I think we should think about it
11:38 in a far greater time horizon
11:42 and think about what we wanna get out of it in the long run.
11:45 - Yeah, well, final question.
11:47 So if I am a university president,
11:51 again, thinking about how much smarter
11:53 college consumers are about their money,
11:56 that they're investing,
11:57 and how much more thoughtful they're being
11:59 to make sure they get that return on investment,
12:03 what could I be doing
12:05 specifically to leverage
12:08 how I can pay them back
12:12 in cultural capital or in networking?
12:14 - So I think we have to think
12:16 about the value propositions differently.
12:18 If this were toothpaste,
12:20 we'd be talking about more fluoride, right?
12:23 Or your teeth are whiter, remove stains.
12:26 And I think that the savviness of today's consumers,
12:29 these are high school students that are going to college,
12:32 like they realize that there's a lot of disparity
12:34 in their minds.
12:36 So the value proposition have to be much greater,
12:39 they have to be much more meaningful
12:41 to what I want to get accomplished,
12:43 which means then a university president
12:46 have to have a better understanding
12:47 of how people are seeing the world.
12:49 They have to have a better understanding
12:50 of what their ambitions are.
12:52 They're not going to school
12:53 for some of the traditional means
12:55 we think about going to school,
12:56 their calculus is just far different.
12:58 So we need to know what the variables are
13:00 and where our school, our branded product offering,
13:04 where we are best situated
13:07 to have a better product market fit.
13:09 And once we look at the calculus, we go,
13:11 oh, we do this better than everybody, let's focus here.
13:14 And you come here to get these things
13:16 and here are all the services, all the opportunities
13:20 and ways by which we'll help you achieve that.
13:22 That becomes the promise of school.
13:25 It takes it away from this sort of,
13:27 you know, binary rubric of,
13:32 if I go to school here,
13:33 will I get this job and make this much money?
13:34 If not, this is not the right place for me.
13:36 And it goes, well, let's actually expand
13:38 the aperture a little bit, let's widen it out a little bit
13:40 and say, what do we want to really get out of this?
13:42 And how can we help you do that very thing?
13:45 - Yeah, well, great.
13:47 Unfortunately, we're out of time,
13:50 but I hope that we do this again soon.
13:53 And thanks so much for coming
13:55 and making us all a little bit smarter about our money.
13:57 - Glad to do it.
13:58 (upbeat music)
14:01 (upbeat music)
14:03 (upbeat music)
14:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]