Social Mobility Through Doctoral Education: Exploring Identity, Classism, and Belongingness

Doctoral students from low-income and economically marginalized (LIEM) backgrounds face unique structural and psychosocial challenges in their programs. Specifically, emerging theories posit that LIEM doctoral students experience interpersonal classism and status uncertainty as they adjust to their new social class contexts (Destin et al., 2017; Garriott, 2020). In turn, these experiences likely affect their sense of belonging and downstream academic outcomes. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to test the relations among interpersonal classism, status-based identity uncertainty (SBIU), belonging, and academic outcomes in a sample of U.S. doctoral students from LIEM backgrounds. While SBIU did not predict the outcomes, interpersonal classism predicted graduate program satisfaction and dropout intentions via belonging. These results suggest the importance of belonging to the academic success of doctoral students from LIEM backgrounds and how experiences of interpersonal classism might erode these students' sense of belonging. Implications for researchers and higher education institutions are discussed.