“Silver delivers on this deep ethnographic exploration into the everyday experiences of students as they grapple with inequality on college campuses. Students’ resiliency may actually heighten risk and insecurity in fascinatingly troubling ways. Upwardly mobile students find themselves in precarious social standings that few overcome without accruing more debt and succumbing to an inequitable education system. The social and cultural capital gap and how it drives insecurity is paramount. This book is important for those aiming to understand the depths of how inequality seeps into higher education.” 

Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland

"College, once a path to stability, is now filled with uncertainty and anxiety. How students navigate this new reality is the focus of Silver’s engrossing book. Poignant and alarming, Degrees of Risk presents college as minefield rather than bubble, with students acting as risk minimizers and opportunity maximizers rather than passionate explorers. A must-read!"

Joanne W. Golan, Vanderbilt University

"This important and well-researched book illuminates the precarity and insecurity many students face in navigating the pathway to a college degree. With important lessons for scholars and higher education administrators, Silver reveals how current institutional emphases on unstructured student choice and flexibility, alongside invisible, inaccessible or disconnected student support services, often impede students’ progress, particularly those least advantaged."

Ann Mullen, University of Toronto, Scarborough

"Degrees of Risk forces us to grapple with just how precarious the paths to and through college have become. Through rich interviews with students making their way through college at one of the most tumultuous times in history, Silver captures the trials and triumphs of investing in education. Central throughout this important work is a dual invitation: to interrogate what makes our campuses so unequal and to do something about it."

Anthony Abraham Jack, author of 'The Privileged Poor'

"In his new book, 'Degrees of Risk: Navigating Insecurity and Inequality in Public Higher Education,' sociology professor Blake R. Silver examines some of many ways that college students can slip through the cracks at public colleges and universities."

The Conversation