From Pipelines to Tasting Lemonade: Reconceptualizing College Access

Pipeline metaphors are ubiquitous in theorizing and interpreting college access processes. In this conceptual article, we explore how a lemonade metaphor can open new possibilities to reimagining higher education access and going processes. We argue that using food metaphors, particularly the processes of mixing, tasting, and digesting lemonade, may help constitute new meanings of college going. Rather than focus on production, mechanization, and ignoring social justice, a lemonade metaphor emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of college-going processes, foregrounds power relations within these processes, and humanizes educational purposes and journeys. We encourage educational researchers to take up taste as a heuristic device to reveal something different about educational phenomena that will, in turn, have material consequences.