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.