Disentangling Social Class and Classism on Work Capital Among College Students

College students from low social class backgrounds may face barriers to vocational development due to limited resources and campus classism. This study specifically aimed to understand how college student’s childhood and current social class backgrounds related to the development of work capital. Using a sample of 664 college students from a public university, we examine childhood and current social class as contextual predictors of institutionalized, citational, and interpersonal classism via discounting. We also centered classism as a predictor of economic, human, social, and cultural work capital. Structural equation modeling suggested that childhood social class negatively predicted institutionalized classism, in turn, relating to lower economic, social, and cultural work capital. These relations also held constant with current social class mediating the relation between childhood social class and internalized classism, which in turn predicted work capital. Childhood social class positively predicted current social class, which related to greater economic, human, and social work capital. The study offers theoretical and practical insights into how the intergenerational cycle of social class-based power and marginalization and institutionalized classism may shape work capital development in college contexts.