The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility

[JonLP24]

Higher education should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power.

A 12th-grader wrote a college admissions essay about wanting to pursue a career in oceanography. Let’s call her Isabella. A few months ago, we edited it in my classroom during lunch. The writing was good, but plenty of 17-year-olds fantasize about swimming with whales. Her essay was distinctive for another reason: Her career goals were not the highlight of the essay. They were just a means of framing her statement of purpose, something surprisingly few personal statements actually get around to making.

The essay’s core concerned the rhetoric that educators had used to motivate her and her peers—other minority students from low-income communities. She’d been encouraged to think of college foremost as a path to socioeconomic mobility. Since elementary school, teachers had rhapsodized about the opportunities that four years of higher education could unlock. Administrators had rattled off statistics about the gulf in earnings between college graduates and those with only high-school diplomas. She’d been told to think about her family, their hopes for her, what they hadn’t had and what she could have if she remained diligent. She’d been promised that good grades and a ticket to a good college would lead to a good job, one that would guarantee her financial independence and enable her to give back to those hard-working people who had placed their faith in her.

Thankfully, Isabella decried this characterization as shortsighted and simplistic. My guess is that only students like her ever have to hear it.

The black and Latino kids I teach live in Inglewood and West Adams in Los Angeles. Their parents are house-cleaners, truck drivers, and non-union carpenters. When administrators, counselors, and teachers repeat again and again that a college degree will alleviate economic hardship, they don’t mean to suggest that there is no other point to higher education. Yet by focusing on this one potential benefit, educators risk distracting them from the others, emphasizing the value of the fruits of their academic labor and skipping past the importance of the labor itself. The message is that intellectual curiosity plays second fiddle to financial security.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/the-danger-of-telling-poor-kids-that-college-is-the-key-to-social-mobility/283120/

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[riderinthestorm]

2. Even here on DU many posters slam all non-STEM degrees as useless

Or if anyone has any student loans taken in pursuit of a liberal or creative arts degree (heaven forbid!) they're roundly excoriated.

Yet by focusing on this one potential benefit, educators risk distracting them from the others, emphasizing the value of the fruits of their academic labor and skipping past the importance of the labor itself. The message is that intellectual curiosity plays second fiddle to financial security

.

God knows "intellectual curiosity" must be shamed and shunned....

[Igel]

3. Yes and no.

The cohort of low-SES kids isn't homogeneous. No one-size-fits-all approach will work.

1. Many low SES kids that are high achievers in HS are pushed to go to the best college they can get into. Then they wind up at the bottom 20% of the curve and are at heightened risk of washing out because they aren't adequately prepared. To this end colleges don't report 4-year graduation rates any more; many don't report 5-year rates. They go for 6-year rates to makes their low-SES "scores" look good. It's an offensive statistic because "low-SES" also has a racial skew, but the research has been replicated and if reproducible facts are offensive it's time to find a new reality.

Some low-SES kids can overcome the learning curve and succeed. Most can't without a lot of help. We need to make sure the kids go to the right places and those who really can't hack the best schools they can get into shoot for one rung down on the ladder.

2. Many low SES kids have financial well-being as their goal and not intellectual curiosity or love for a subject. That is a limited POV if you're into education as culture. But if that's what's important to a kid, we have two choices: we can re-educate them or meet them where they are.

A lot of low-SES kids do have a love of learning and curiosity for a field. It has to be presented as a really important motivation for college. But if it takes the lure of $ to get a kid into college in a major, s/he can always change majors--and have the opportunity to fall in love with a major that may not be apparent. I fell in love in Slavic languages. My high school had no Slavic program, no linguistics program. My high school buddy had electrical engineering as his passion--and so a teacher set up a way of getting him experience, even if HS had nothing appropriate.

3. Probably the most important thing that the kids need to understand is that high SES folk typically come from a given kind of background: at least middle-SES parents. It takes a while for attitudes, background knowledge, wealth, connections, attitudes to be built or change. Whatever ideologues may say, however they manipulate the definitions of SES within an article to make their point, it almost always takes more than one generation to shift SES statuses really dramatically. Instead of comparing low to high SES mobility ("gotta have it all!"?), it's best to look at low-to-middle SES mobility.

[Shandris]

4. Well, just looking at it from a distance...

...(as I remember these exact same talks), I would point out that there aren't very many of us who can even -consider- for the briefest moment of reality dropping eighty thousand dollars for 'intellectual curiosity'. I mean...yah, you mean well when you say that, but you're speaking from a position where you can actually -consider- that possibility. Which means you're not coming from -her- position, or mine, or anyone else like us at the time. I could tell that just from the snippet presented; imagine my surprise to find the author talking about teaching in private schools (there wasn't any).

I understand that it is sad that most folk can't do that, and I'd agree with that all day long. But in society as it currently exists, very few people -- and virtually none of the marginalized -- will ever have the opportunity to choose based on what they 'want to learn'. And we never will so long as college costs what it does. If you want to help them, target the source of the problem. That source isn't how college is sold to them, that's just a symptom. It's how the entire system of payment for college works in the first place.

[Nay]

6. ++1000. Few can afford to pay for a degree that does not directly get them

a decent-paying job. It is absurd to lecture them to do otherwise these days, because it gets them (and us) what we've got -- a messed-up system where college grads have huge debts and work at Starbucks.

As I said many years ago, once university systems were subsumed under the business model rather than the ivory tower intellectual model, the idea of learning something for the love of it was going to go straight out the window. Mock the ivory tower as you will, but once business took over, learning went into the toilet. Once money-making is the object, learning is NOT the object. This is true of any undertaking like the prison system, primary schooling, health care, etc. Once money-making is the object, sensible reasons for these systems (prison=rehab of bad ppl; schooling=education of citizens up to their intellectual limits; health care=healthy total populace at reasonable cost) are utterly destroyed.

And, as we can see, many degrees (no matter how expensive) have become useless because the money-making function of universities directs the u. to take all comers; reduce the rigor of classes so as many people as possible can pass; keep all marginal/failing students for 4 years so tuition will keep coming in. Not a good thing. I know college 'graduates' who can't write 3 correct sentences in a row. This never happened 40 years ago when I was in college. Sorry, it just didn't.

[Shandris]

7. Very well said, Nay, and absolutely true as far as my experience has gone!

It seems that perhaps instead of just having 'public' and 'private' utilities, there should be a third category. Social utilities; those that comprise systems that stretch across the entirety of the nation and have resounding effects through generations. All of the ones you mention should/would fit that qualification, and they are among the most important treasures we can offer our people as a nation. Profit, the Great Corrupter, must not be allowed to infest these types of utilities imo. Private and, to a lesser degree, public utilities can still survive even with a bit of profit motive attached. But societal institutions must stand apart. They are the bedrock upon which all of our accomplishments will be based.

[hunter]

5. Educations ought to be free for everyone at any time in their lives.

Otherwise the wealthy take the benefits and leave everyone else in the dirt.

Unpaid internships at large corporations and such are as wicked as the current very expensive college system. It gives the venal spawn of the very wealthy, fucks like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an unfair advantage over the rest of us.

I graduated from college with NO LOANS. College was practically free compared to today. I could pay for it by taking quite ordinary jobs that interfered only slightly with my studies and with some help from my middle class family, like a hundred bucks a month from my grandmother, which she took from her generous UNION pension.

Academically inclined kids from lower income families got grants for living expenses, books, etc., and we had a lot of G.I. Bill veterans too.

There is no reason we could not bring that all back except for the squealing pigs among the very wealthy who want to take it all, to the point they are willing to starve old people and children, kick unemployed people out onto the streets, and generally make the world suck for everyone but themselves.

[one_voice]

17. +1

Agree with everything you said.

I too agree that educations ought to be free or very low cost--though I think free is the best way to go. With what we pay in taxes you'd think we'd get something other than bridges falling and wars back.

People claim they don't want to pay as much as other countries, the dumb asses don't realize they already do that--when you add ALL the damn taxes you're hit with, it's more in some cases.

Cable bill, phone bill, property taxes, fed, state and so on...

[Pretzel_Warrior]

8. WTF? Because college education IS the highest probability means of

Liw-income minorities getting out of the poverty trap. I see anti-science support for woo on DU and now I see anti-education propaganda on here.

Statistics show and my own anecdotal experience back up the notion that getting a four year degree from an accredited, respected institution such as state universities is the key to being a more fully thoughtful human AND higher income/job security and skills transferability.

[nessa]

10. Not if they don't have the aptitude or the desire to work in fields that require a four year degree.

A plumber, an HVAC technician, an electrician, a carpenter, many of these trades can be a path out of poverty and more realistic for some..

[Pretzel_Warrior]

12. I disagree. Only a very few aren't intelligent enough to earn a four year

Degree. To me, it should be the first option with some opting to start at community cleve for a 2 year transfer degree. Once in school, a person can decide their original idea is not what they wanted and can choose another direction.

I've seen people with 4 year degree in English have a better shot at a good payi g manufacturing supervision job than someo e with years more experience in the manufacturing industry.

Four year degree demonstrates a person's ability to follow through on long term commitments and overcome obstacles to achieve goals which are traits highly sought after in the job market.

[nessa]

13. I don't think it's about intelligence. Some people just don't like traditional academic subjects ...

and traditional school. You can work with your hands, work for a small company. It can be a better place to start for some people. If after you have been making some money and gained some maturity you can go back and get a business degree or study more college subjects.

There are so many more options today. You can do stuff online. You can take it slow.

I know some electricians and plumbers who make more money than teachers, social workers or graphic designers.

If you present a four year college degree as the only good option, you can seriously limit people. If you make them feel inferior because they aren't successful with college bound courses you doom them before they even get out the gate.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

14. I can agree with those statements

[Heddi]

15. I didn't go to school for many years after HS because 4-year was the only option presented to me

and I'm not a 4-year college person, or at least not when I was 17.

I was an AP, honors student, but not smart enough to garner a full-on scholarship, and I was too poor to pay my own way, but not poor enough to get a hardship scholarship. My SAT scores were horrible because I'm functionally illiterate in math (but super at life sciences and humanities). So I could barely get into the state university with my SAT, and the most scholarship I qualified for was a $500/year "daughter of daughter of shriner" or some bullshit.

Guidance councelors told me that the only people that went to 2 year community colleges were "losers" who had no real shot at life.

So, knowing that I couldn't afford to go, and knowing that I didn't really have an interest in any 4-year programs, I just didn't go to college until i was in my late 20's, and I got my RN through an associates degree program. I'm now an RN for 8 years, and finally getting my Bachelor's.

Knowing myself, there is no way I would have had the stamina to take the classes and do the required studying necessary for success in a 4-year college.

Plus, I needed to work. Community college allowed me to work and go to school. I could take night classes. Classes were shorter, less expensive, and more tailored towards my degree. I took classes that were important for my degree, but not years of history and geology. Now I'm making up for that with the BSN, because now I have to take 4 semesters of world history, 2 semesters of US history. Look, I get that history makes one a well-rounded individual, but I"m 38 years old. I am only getting my BSN because it's a requirement of my job.

No, a 4-year degree isn't a requirement for success in life and fiancial independence. In 2006, when I graduated nursing school, I went from making $30k in advertising to IMMEDIATELY making $46k as an RN. I got that degree in 2 years. And only because of my current job and future plans am I getting my BSN.

As an RN with an associates degree, and 8 years experience, I currently make $80k. So does my husband who is also an RN with an Associate's degree. He has 6 years experience and makes more than I do.

So no, a 4-year degree is not the only solution. Great careers and education can be gained at an Associates Degree level, especially in healthcare-related jobs.

[TBF]

9. "The message is that intellectual curiosity plays second fiddle to financial security" -

How can it be any different when capitalism is our economic system and the only goal that is rewarded is profit?

[nessa]

11. This shouldn't be about telling poor kids something, or telling rich kids or middle class kids...

If kids are not able to do college bound work in traditional academic subjects, because they don't have the interest or the ability, then they should be shown alternatives without judgement.

The HS I taught at, had a very popular Vo-Tech school option. The kids could explore careers in the trades. Plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, computer technicians can make good money. Often they make more money than someone with a 4 year teaching degree, or an English Lit degree or many other 4 year degrees.

A 4 year college degree is not for everyone and it is annoying that people present it as such. That somehow kids who opt to learn trades are somehow lesser.

Combine knowledge of a trade with good business knowledge and you can do very well. But business courses are being eliminated from High schools as are some vo-tech programs. They generally aren't given any attention by state or federal governments.

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. kick