Guest Author: Title VI Funding for Area Students by anonymous-sarah

A recent Inside Higher Ed article by Elizabeth Redden addressed the 2011 47% budget cut to the Title VI National Resource Centers. These 125 Area Studies centers at public and private universities function to develop language facility and cultural awareness for the critical languages identified by the US Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce.  The concerns expressed in the article and at the conference dealt with the incongruity between the stated need to broaden the talent pool of those with advanced capacity in the critical languages and the deep cut in Title VI funding.

But if Title VI funding were fully restored to pre-2011 levels, would the impact on the number of college graduates with critical language proficiency be significant? The National Resources Centers are run by faculty, and serve the individual research interests of faculty by supplementing salaries and funding research travel. Depending on the preferences of the faculty and of those administering grants and salary supplementations, the outcomes may be more or less aligned with the objectives of the Title VI program. The conversation around the restoration of this funding should not be had without a strong proposal for making it more effective at achieving broader proficiency in the critical languages.

In addition to funding faculty positions and research, the National Resource Centers house small libraries; fund symposia, lectures, and film series; and engage in outreach efforts to K-12 educators. Language instruction is part of the equation, but there is at least as much emphasis on efforts to foster cultural understanding.

The promotion of culture studies is a laudable aim, though general cultural knowledge is a poor substitute for the ability to function in another language well enough to engage with a culture on its own terms. Culture studies filtered through one’s native language can be enjoyable, but is a bit like gazing at one’s fellow human beings through Hello Kitty colored goggles:  lots of goodwill comes through, but not enough authenticity. If we are serious about using Title VI for its intended purpose (and I believe we should be), the focus should be heavily on the learning of the 13 critical languages.

The way we approach language learning in the United States is largely a function of our geography, which is to say that with English as our unofficial official language, we have Mexican Spanish speakers bordering us to the south, and a low concentration of Canadian English speakers and the Québécois to our north. The personal need for most Americans to master a second language is not urgent. In our education system, we do a lot of second language teaching, but not much of it very effectively.  Furthermore, the ROI for the individual engaged in 2^nd language learning is in fact, not great:  A recent study at MIT showed evidence of only a 2-3% salary lift for college graduates with proficiency in a 2^nd language other than English. 

And for all of the hours of language instruction spent in Middle Schools and High Schools, few students arrive at four year colleges with enough proficiency to test into the second year of coursework. While working in an East Asian Area Studies Department at a large state university in the Midwest, I observed that incoming freshmen with four years of high school level Mandarin Chinese might rarely test into the second semester of Chinese I, but usually placed into the introductory level class.

Where critical languages are concerned, the acquisition runway is a long one. These are languages with few to no cognates or near cognates to English, and many do not use the Roman alphabet (or any alphabet, in the case of Chinese).  The approach we take to extending the runway to the K-12 set in the critical languages should be different to the approach we currently use to teach Spanish, French, etc. It must begin early enough to take advantage of the critical period for second language acquisition between birth and age 12.

Second language acquisition is mostly drudgery, and it is especially so for adult learners (ages 17+). To have any success with it, you have to want it. Bad. Bad enough to do the daily drill of vocabulary memorization, endure the hours of discomfort trying to grasp at anything in the auditory environment that will mean something to your ears, and if you are lucky enough to spend time in the country where your target language is spoken, you have to chance doing things like ordering a mushroom smoothie when you really meant banana. You have to be both disciplined and a risk taker. And you have to find as many moments of joy in this pursuit as you can until one day your facility becomes pleasurable. If you can make it that far, you are hooked. Our chances at bringing more young people to this point improve if we get to them while they are young.

Historically, Title VI has worked through the National Resource centers to extend the runway for critical languages through outreach efforts to K-12 teachers. Teacher outreach programs include everything from language training to cultural immersion opportunities abroad. Having been a K-12 teacher in a former life, I’m supportive of programs that broaden the experiences and knowledge for this group, and having worked as an Area Studies Grants Assistant, got to see the results in action. These outreach efforts are well-intentioned, but diffuse, as they must do their work through the filter of a teacher picking up a few professional development units on summer break.

What if we restored Title VI funding such that we extended the language acquisition runway in a direct, meaningful way to grade school children? If only someone were already running a low-cost model language instruction operation on college campuses for K-12 students in the United States, then we wouldn’t have to think too hard about how to do this. Wait! Someone is: The People’s Republic of China.

Every Saturday during the academic year, enough children to fill four floors of a large classroom building attend Mandarin language classes on the ASU campus. This operation is run by the Arizona Confucius Institute, which like all other Confucius Institutes, is a non-profit organization affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education and aimed at promoting Chinese language learning and culture worldwide. The classes are cheap (about $7 for 1.5 hours of instruction), and the pedagogy is very Chinese (lots of flash cards and 4 year-olds sitting at desks with pencil to paper for 90 minutes), but most importantly, this classroom building becomes the target language environment every Saturday (no 14 hour flight necessary!). All language instruction is strictly in Mandarin, and so is most of the socializing. Parent volunteers handle most of the administrative tasks, and native speakers from the University community and beyond are recruited to do the teaching.

The Confucius Institute model could be adapted to address language learning for all 13 of the most critical languages. Operating weekend and summer language institutes for K-12 students under a single umbrella at universities would be cost effective and a good use of Title VI outreach dollars. This approach could serve to complement to the government’s summer Startalk programs and promote learning of these languages year round.

If we were to fully restore Title VI and implemented this more direct approach of reaching young students, we could do at least as well as the Chinese Ministry of Education at language education for children in the United States.

anonymous-sarah works at the same Phoenix area for-profit higher education institution as anonymousbjorn.

Please...don’t Change

It is odd; the more I read about change in higher education the more pessimistic I get about some of the people who populate those hallowed halls. Countless articles come out about a wide variety of changes that are occurring all around the country and when you read the comments sections at Inside Higher Ed., The Chronicle, or the New York Times, the people who leave them are all angry!

Not all of these angry comments can be left by trolls and I assume the vast majority of these people work in higher education (who else reads The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed.)? I also understand that everyone has different life and career experiences; some ‘better’ than others. But I do not understand why so many people seem to be angry to the point of being mean and insulting, often belittle the writer of the article in-question, do not seem to trust anyone especially administration, rarely offer constructive criticism, only seems to want to put up roadblocks, and blatantly project their biases on whatever is being discussed (I always thought higher education was about controlling and overcoming your biases).

So with this said, my advice to people who are constantly obstructing change in higher education; keep on doing what you are doing and please...don’t change. The only problem with this advice is that if you actually do nothing and don’t change you might be put in an awkward position when change comes your way .

Who. It depends on who you are. If you are a tenured professor who is know around the country/word/universe then you can probably do whatever you want. You have been around long enough to have seniority over most other professors and are on committees that gives you some political power. But if you are adjunct, a lecturer, working on tenure, are newly tenured, or are at the end of your career and you decide not to change; you might be put in an awkward position.

What. It depends on what content you teach in. If you are in business, one of the lucrative sciences, a high enrollment content area, or a field that brings in plenty of money then keep on doing what you are doing. If you are in the other sciences, the humanities, the fine arts, or social sciences and you decide not to change; you might be put in an awkward position.

Where. It depends on where you are. If you are at an institutions with a large endowment that is not susceptible to economic cycles and the majority of your students are super-high achieving then keep on doing what you are doing; there will probably be little internal or external pressure for you to change. But if you are at an institution where budgets are tight, state appropriations are shrinking, or enrollments have dwindled and you decide not to change; you might be put in an awkward position.

Before I move on, is all change good? No, of course not. Are all decisions in higher education (or anywhere) made by listening to every stakeholder and carefully considering every possible option? No, unfortunately not. Is higher education changing? Yes. Will it look the same as it did for the last few decades? No, most places it will look different by 2025.

Finally, how. How will change occur? Unfortunately change occurs differently depending on the institution, the people involved, the transparency of change, and how inclusive the process is or is not. In addition, when people plan for change by the time it is finally implemented many aspects of the original plan have been changed.

So if you were not immune to change what should you do? When I was young I was taught that when you play with others you play fair, you play nice, and do not cheat. As I have aged I transposed this to my work life; you follow rules, you act friendly and cordial to others, and you do not lie for selfish gain. (You also use your critical thinking skills to ask the difficult questions, creativity to solve problems, and use your interpersonal skills to build a network; everything you learned during college).

So my only advice to people in higher education is to act professional, be nice, and do not do anything for selfish gain (that includes a lot of things). For many change is here and it is unnerving; people get defensive when the unknow occurs. But if you work with the people around you, contribute honest and constructive feedback, and do everything for the betterment of your institution, things should work out.

Song/Week: Le Sacre du printemps, Igor Stravinsky

For my initial Song of the Week post  I am going to post the most famous of all 20th century works, Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky. This work, without going into too much detail, ushered in much of 20th century Classical music along with the likes Schoenberg right before the War to End All Wars. I also recommend watching the 2009 movie, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky; the first 15-minutes are brilliant as it recreates all of the stress, dissonance, and riotous events that occurred during the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps. I also referenced Le Sacre du printemps in my recent article, Can Music Shock Anymore?

The performance chosen is the brilliant Joffrey Ballet recreation of the original 1913 premier of the Le Sacre du printemps. In this recreation the Joffrey Ballet tried to recreate everything as it would have been seen and heard during the premiere; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, costumes by Nicholas Roerich, and of course music by Igor Stravinsky.

I am Below Average...How About That!

I did not realize it, but I am below average! When I step back and look at myself I always have thought...pretty average. 5’11’’, average; 175 pounds, average. I live somewhere in-between Los Angeles and New York; average. As I was listening and reading about how College Board is revamping the SAT for 2016 and I started reflecting; how did I score on the SAT compared to everyone else?

First of all, I can not remember my exact score. I took the SAT back in 1993 and I scored somewhere between a 950 to 980 back when the composite score was 1600. I looked up some historic scores on College Board and I found that I scored around the 41st percentile. I might still be within the range of ‘average’, between 40% to 60% but for this article, I will say I am below average.

At this point my ego became a bit deflated. I have always worked hard throughout my life, always tried to learn as much as I could, and have been successful. So what does my SAT score tell me about me today? Nothing anymore. What did it say about me when I was 17?

When I was 17 and took the SAT I did not study, I did not buy a prep book, and I did not take any SAT prep courses/workshops. I signed-up, showed-up, and took it. Shortly after I took that SAT I decided to go to Missouri State (known as Southwest at the time) and they required ACT scores so I took the ACT and got an equivalent score, low twenties...again, I can’t remember. In the meantime I got my bachelor’s and master’s in six-years and started my doctorate at 24. My doctorate took a long time to finish and I got an MBA on the way, but this was all adult stuff, beyond the original scope of the SAT...or is it?

Now that I am an adult work in higher education administration I can see the benefits of the SAT...to a point. In an excellent article at Slate, David Hambrick and Christopher Chabris went over the pros and cons of the SAT and their first noteworthy statement was “the SAT does predict success in college—not perfectly, but relatively well, especially given that it takes just a few hours to administer. And, unlike a ‘complex portrait’ of a student’s life, it can be scored in an objective way.” This is logical. The SAT (and ACT), which takes only a few hours to complete and is taken by millions of students (1.6 million took the SAT and 1.6 million took the ACT in 2012) can relatively well predict how a student will do in college and thereafter.

So the SAT is most beneficial at scale. The SAT is also amazing because it creates an almost perfect bell curve.

Chart 1: SAT bell curve for 2012 (critical thinking and math)

Now I am not an expert stats person but the fact that 1.6 million students can take the SAT and the results look this statistically sound is very cool (I am sure there is a more academic word out there). Another interesting observation about the 2012 results is where the quartiles fall.

Chart 2: Quartiles of 2012 SAT (critical thinking and math)

Where the scores lie tell us that students can differentiate themselves depending on where they score. The top 25% is from 1160 to 1600 with a range of 440 points while the middle 50% is from 870 and 1150 and has a range of 280 points. When looking at the middle 50% all the students look the same, they are all crammed within 280 points of each other while students who score in the top 25% can differentiate themselves over a wider range of 440 points. Having a large upper range allows selective and highly selective schools that require the SAT to automatically filter out 74% or more of entering freshman.

Moving on, the best quote from the Slate article discusses general intelligence:

“What this all means is that the SAT measures something…General intelligence. The content of the SAT is practically indistinguishable from that of standardized intelligence tests that social scientists use to study individual differences, and that psychologists and psychiatrists use to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled… Howard Gardner, known for his theory of multiple intelligences, once called the SAT and other scholastic measures ‘thinly disguised’ intelligence tests.”

I agree that intelligence tests are a positive and even if this is a ‘thinly disguised’ intelligence test it allows schools to understand one aspect of potential applicants. Scenario: imagine you are in charge of admissions at a large public or private institution; how are you going to sift through thousands of applicants you get every year? Unfortunately most schools do not have the time to look over every applicant and truly assess individual students in a holistic way; maybe Bard College can do this but Arizona State University, Ohio State University, and the like cannot. For the class of 2017, the eight Ivy League schools accepted 23,010 students and rejected 224,273 students. How else are these eight schools going to reject so many students without a filter like the SAT or ACT?

As a gate into college, how applicable is the SAT after college? Sure, it can predict how successful someone might be, but how many intelligence tests have I taken in my professional careers? Zero. How many companies require intelligence of their employees? Not that many. So the fact that the SAT measures general intelligence is good, but the SAT is still a way to filter out students on the front end of college with one simple score and has little to nothing to do with you after college.

Finally the quote that summarizes the Slate article, “ the bottom line is that there are large, measurable differences among people in intellectual ability, and these differences have consequences for people’s lives. Ignoring these facts will only distract us from discovering and implementing wise policies.”

True. There are going to be differences between students who score a 950 and a 1450 but the biggest issue I have with the SAT is not with the student who score in the top 25% or the highly selective schools who accept those students; I am concerned about the rest of the students. What happens if you do score a 850, a 950, or a 1050? How are you suppose to feel about yourself when you are going to your local community college or state school; are you going to feel less of a student? I have to question what types of policies can be written when it comes to a standardized test that millions of students take especially when the SAT is really used to filter out the middle scores and only reward the top. How will these policies help the bottom 25%? How will wise policies help a person who scored in the 50% successfully complete college?

Back to me; I would say that the SAT is not beneficial when you take into consideration the individual and adult learners. For those 18 entering college as freshmen the SAT is just part of the game, it helps schools put you in a positive bucket, a neutral bucket, or a negative bucket. If you are an adult student or are entering graduate school then the SAT tell you nothing. For me, I am 21-years past the SAT and it is firmly my past and the only thing that is guiding my future, is me.

Undermatching?

In the following article I am going to look at the phenomenon, the assumptions, and the research of undermatching in higher education. .

Phenomenon. “‘Undermatching,’ the phenomenon in which students enroll at less-selective colleges than their academic qualifications suggest they could have attended,” as stated in a brief article at The Chronicle. To start off, I am not sure why this is a phenomenon; students and people are rarely perfectly matched based on their qualifications, abilities, intelligence, or drive. Rather than being a rare occurrence, undermatching in higher education and in many aspects of people’s lives, in my opinion, is common.

Assumptions. Undermatching assumes that high performing students need to be matched to an equivalent institution to reach their full potential. As stated later in the article, “the undermatched students reported a less-challenging academic environment, lower satisfaction, and fewer gains. Those findings, the paper states, may explain why students who undermatch are less likely to graduate, as other research has found.”

Question: if a high performing student is less-challenged why would they not graduate? These students are not young teenagers in high school, they are not fourteen and full of angst, they are not trying to proving themselves (as young teenagers need to); these are college students who by the undermatched definition, are high performing. The assumption that a high performing, less-challenged student might not graduate is...interesting. This assumption puts all of the responsibility to graduate high performing student on the institution and not on the student. The student is the one who attends class, turns in the assignments, and earns the grades. If the student is less-challenged then they can study on the side, be a student leader, read additional books, practice their writing skills on a blog that allows them to push their abilities and constantly strive for self-improve rather than expecting the institution to do all for them.

Research. The quotable quote from the study by Kevin Fosnacht at the American Educational Research Association, on of the articles referenced in The Chronicle article, states, “this study found that undermatches encounter a less challenging academic environment, report fewer gains in their learning and development, and have less satisfaction with their institution.” Logical.

When I was in undergrad I was bored at times so part of my learning and development was affected and because of this, I was not always satisfied with my institution. The same thing happened during my graduate studies but by then I realized that when it comes to learning and development, this responsibility was not me and not the institution; I had to and made the best of my educational situation.

Another quote from the paper by Fosnacht is that undermatched students had fewer gains in their learning and development might come from “the lack of academic rigor may be a result of a less rigorous curriculum, but more likely due to the differences in the student body composition.” To me this is key.

Fewer gains in learning and development for an undermatched student is related to the student body, or peers. A portion of what a student will learn and develop as an individual is because of the pressures and interactions that come from the  circles he or she is part of while attending college. These social and academic interactions push students to improve or not improve. The different between highly selective and other institutions is that at highly selective institutions most of your peers are high performing while at less selective schools, a minority of your peers are high performing (I will not include percentages that I cannot back-up).

In addition to the student body composition, I don’t think anyone would publicly say that an education at UT-El Paso, Missouri State University, or the University of Arizona is less challenging or has less rigorous curriculum than at a highly selective school; curriculum is curriculum. Faculty members at less selective institutions have doctorates, publish, and are dedicated to quality and just because someone teaches at a highly selective institution does not mean they are better teachers. The ability to research and publish does not automatically mean you know how to teach undergraduates. One of the distinct advantages of a highly selective institution is a low student to faculty ratio, at Grinnell College the ration is 9 to 1 while at Missouri State it is 21 to 1.

The final quote from Fosnacht’s paper states, “simply, if a student perceives that the costs of college outweigh the benefits, they will drop out.” I think no matter what a person does in life, if they perceive the cost outweigh the benefit, they will drop out. If a person is working somewhere and the cost outweigh the benefit, they will quit. If a person is trying to keep a relationship together but the cost outweigh the benefit, they will break-up with their partner. If a student attends a school where they are not thriving and the cost outweigh the benefit, the student will drop out and find somewhere else to go. (One a side note, it is notoriously difficult to track and statistically state what happens to students who drops out; graduation rates really only track four and six year graduation rates.)

Now that we have gone over the phenomenon, the assumptions, and the research of undermatching (not exhaustive at all) what can be done about undermatching? Well...nothing and everything.

First; the phenomenon of undermating as stated before is not uncommon but is exceedingly common. Although faculty are researching undermatching, writing papers, and presenting their findings at conferences, higher education should come to grips that not every student is matched perfectly with the institution they attend. With the Ivy League and Ivy equivalents educating well under 2% of the overall student population, there are a lot of students not attending ‘highly selective’ institutions. These high performing students can attend any college in the country and still get a great education; high performing students need to push themselves, faculty need to watch out for talent and develop it, institutions need to have the right support available, and students need to surround themselves with like-minded peers. (On a side note, what defines a high performing student: the top 0.5%; 2% or 5%; or the top 10% or 20%?)

Second, not being completely satisfied with one’s institution is not unheard of. The grass is not always greener somewhere else and students and faculty have to make the best of their situation. Maybe I have this point-of-view because I attended less-selective institutions and would have considered myself undermatched but after time to reflect these schools were a good match for me at the age I attended them. We cannot all be wunderkinder at age 18 and get into Princeton, Stanford, Williams College, or Grinnell, but if you attend one of these institutions maybe your satisfaction is100% while “less satisfaction” with your institution is only a provincial problem.

Finally, the responsibility of graduating is on the student. I understand that undermatched students are theoretically missing out on a golden opportunity to attend a highly selective school but an undergraduate degree is not the end of one’s education. What we learn and experience during the ages of 18-22 is formative but there is a lot of life to live afterwards. When I look back at my undergraduate years they were important but those years and experiences are a distant memory (I am much closer to 40 than 30). By stating that undermatching is a problem and that students will suffer because of it discounts what people do after their undergrad and assumes that a bachelor’s degree is the guiding light that determines what will happen from age 22 until...whenever.

Can Music Shock Anymore?

The short of it is no, music cannot shock anymore.

Recently, I have been reading a wonderful book by a truly excellent writer, The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. This book covers many events pre-World War I but the chapter that stands out discusses Richard Strauss. Not being a trained musician, Tuchman writes exceedingly well on the subject of Strauss, his music, and the way he influenced and impacted the world around him.

Strauss is also one of my heros; I know this is dull and simplistic since I am a composer (amature), but it is the truth. After going through well over a decade-plus of formal music training and listening to every conceivable composer I still love Strauss, Bruckner, Bach, Haydn, and Schoenberg; these composers are the foundation of my musical style (I love many others, but for now I will stick with the Germans).

Along with The Proud Tower, I recently read the article “Shock Me if You Can” in the New York Times by Jennifer Schuessler. This article discussed how, why, and if art can shock anyone. It mentions the likes of John Waters, the Saw movies, Lars von Trier, Karen Finley, and Robert Mapplethorpe. With the visual and theatrical arts represented, it only mentioned music twice; first how the controversies surrounding Elvis and gangster rap and how the riot during the premier of the Le Sacre du printemps is a ‘presenter’s dream’ according to one New York artistic director (being snarky, I find that comment exceedingly banal).

In a similar article at WQXR, “100 Years After Stravinsky's 'Rite,' Can Classical Music Still Shock?” this topic was discussed with the likes of Leo Bolstein and BBC Music critic Richard Morrison. According to Morrison, “composers today rarely seek the label enfant terrible, added Morrison. ‘I think they rather like to be liked rather than creating an uproar.’” To me this comment is simplistic yet has many truths in it; many composers today make their living working in academia so they do not have to rely on selling their music and if they could, many of them would love the label enfant terrible. With that said, there is over 100-years of avant garde music out there so any composer who tried to be an enfant terrible today would really just be copying Prokofiev.

The next comment, comes straight from Bolstein,"the problem is the audience is musically illiterate and therefore if you want to do something very daring and sophisticated you’re presuming a literate audience." This comment comes straight from a conductor’s mouth; true but exceedingly snobby. I understand that 101-years ago when the Le Sacre du printemps premiered amature music making was common, but I highly doubt that enough people would have been musically literate to get and appreciate something that was musically “daring and sophisticated.”

The final quote from the article sums up my, and I think many people’s view of music’s inability to shock:

“To some extent, it isn't possible to shock audiences because everything seems to have been done. By the 1960s, composers had explored the outer extremes of total Serialism, computer music and John Cage-style chance. The hybrid, postmodern styles embraced by composers in the last two decades, by contrast, are seldom driven by a need to provoke”

I will only speak for myself, but during the 50s and 60s composers explored total Serialism, computer music, and John Cage type music and what was discovered? That this music was rarely music. It is mainly artistic farting, scratching, and whaling intermixed with silence. Just listen to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. I like it, but I don’t want to listen to it for thirty-minutes.

Can Classical Music shock anymore? No.

With that said there is a huge world of Classical Music that I am not familiar with, much of which does not get much press (Classical Music rarely gets any press). I might be missing works that are using disgusting, violent, pornographic, or ultra-realistic subject matter that is intended to shock rather than uplift, enlighten, or entertain. But if people are being shocked by pornography set to Classical Music it is still missing the most important component of music, the music; and in its present incarnation, music cannot shock anymore.

Different Messages

Depending on where you are in society, college means something different. In a recent article at The Atlantic, Andrew Simmons discusses “The Danger of Telling Poor Kids That College is the Key to Social Mobility”.

My first impression after just reading the title was college is about social mobility; you go to college to get a better job and hopefully do better than your parents. Coming from a very middle-class family, a military man and a nurse, going to college seemed like the best way for me to achieve social mobility.

After reading the article I am mixed; I understand and agree with everything that Andrew Simmons wrote, but I find it a bit dreamy rather than real. College for me was for the most part, a place of self-discovery; I did not struggle to find myself in college or have experiences that drastically shaped who I am personality wise, but I discovered who the musician in me was throughout my college experience. This discovery did take a while, from undergraduate into my graduate studies and was only solidified half-way through my doctorate (I have always been a bit slow) and by that time a variety of life events had occurred and my desire to “do something special” was now playing “second fiddle to financial security.”

My story is common; middle class kid who has talent and desire but was not able to finish quick enough to get the academic, tenure-track job. I did not have the financial independence to go through ten-years plus of schooling and I eventually reached a crossroad; I had to get a non-academic, non-musician job to sooth my anxiety about not having enough money to pay the bills.

Back to the article. I have read countless stories about how Swarthmore, Haverford, and other similar institutions provide unimaginable opportunities and intellectual richness to their students so that anyone who earns a degree from one of these baby ivies (or Ivies) will be changed forever. That is great, but the reality is few families can afford the $61,784 it costs to go to Haverford for one year let alone four? I understand that college pricing is all about discounts, scholarships, and grants, but students from the middle and lower classes still have to shell out a good amount of money to go to one of these places even if it is just living expenses in Philadelphia (right next to Villanova, Bryn Mawr, Cabrini College, St. Joseph’s, Eastern University, and down the road from Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania) . To complicate things, if a student is low SEC he or she might find it difficult to ‘fit-in’ during a time when fitting-in is important (even though colleges students often say otherwise).

Schools like Haverford do not hold the secrets to success but they do have large endowments that allow for small class sizes (access to faculty), intellectual connectivity through technology and the school’s network, and the ability to bring together a lot of ‘like-minded’ students to learn from each other. When I say ‘like-minded’ I do not mean that they are all white and upper-class but they are all high performing, motivated students whose parents (most) have helped them get to Haverford and have been thinking about what college their kid(s) would attend ever since they were born.

Again, this article has a lot truths and many valid points, but another point of view could be that no matter where you go, higher education can prepare you for whatever your future holds. Many students who go to a school like UT-El Paso could have been prepared by their families to “take on leadership roles and nurtured their capacity for confident self-expression and argument” while learning additional skills at UT-El Paso to succeed in life. Now will their degree say Haverford and will they have the networking opportunities available at Haverford? No. Will they have gone to school in the Philadelphia metro area where there are numerous world renown schools and cultural centers all within a short distance of each other? No.

But according to one source, 0.4% of students attend Ivy league schools, and if you expand this to Ivy-equivalents and baby ivies this percentage might go up to...2%. Should we really be telling students that the small ivy covered liberal arts school are the ideal? Anyone, no matter who they and what social group they come from have the capabilities to be creative, task oriented, and capable employees (rarely are we just one or the other). I understand the concept of the hidden curriculum but the fact is that rich kids just have more time to ‘think’ about things because they don’t have to get a job right away while ‘poor’ kids have to get a job because their bank account has $5 in it (like mine did for years).

So what do we do? I agree with Andrew Simmons at the end when he states that, “we need to proactively teach our most marginalized students that honing an intellectually curious frame of mind is as essential to leading an invigorating working life as ambition and work ethic.” This proactive teaching needs to occur at all levels leading up to and in college but it also has to occur at home (schools, as we have learned from primary and secondary education, cannot teach everything). As educators, parents, and individuals, we have to instill in our students that intellectual curiosity and creativity are important not only for when you start working, but for living your life. And finally we have to accept that an excellent education can be had at any college and even at a school like UT-El Paso; Ivies and baby ivies do not hold the only keys to success.