college or country club
Posted on April 5, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark, education |
Since my post on college entrance anxiety and beer pong was so well received (0 comments), I’m going to continue to the beat the horse of higher education just a little bit. A few more lashings with my stick and I’ll be through. Maybe a comment or two will inspire me to shut my trap. But ’tis the season and every one else is talking about college rejection and acceptance, so I feel compelled to weigh in, frequently.
This topic is of particular interest to me because I’m enduring my own entrance-anxiety hell as I await my rejection from one of the Northeast’s premier creative writing workshops. I spent the entire Fall and Winter writing my tail off and submitted three works of short fiction and a shameless self promotional essay well before the deadline of March 1st. Now I must pace by the mailbox like every other applicant in America. Somehow I feel I should be exempt from this sort of spine tingling, finger drumming form of waiting. Having graduated from college in ‘95 and finished my last graduate school class in ‘99, I’m just too old for this drama. Shouldn’t there be an express application process for the aging and impatient? Because I’m working on three hours sleep in the last 35 days and that’s WITH the help of Ambien CR. Maybe I should pretend I’m eighteen all over again and try bong hits?
With so little sleep and the headache I’ve developed from banging my head against the wall of missed opportunity, I’m having trouble forming any original thoughts today. So I’ll share with you what other clear headed and brilliantly informed people have to say on the topic of higher education. In the news today, specifically on NPR’s On Point, pundits are tackling the issue of the economic inequality perpetuated by our nation’s top colleges and universities. The thrust of the conversation on talk radio today goes something like this; the nation is defined by a greater class divide than ever before, a divide played out in the admissions offices of Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the other top 200 schools in the country. Essentially, college has become the finishing school for rich kids, those that can afford the $48,000 a year room, board and tuition ticket. As I pointed out earlier this week, more affluent and capable students are applying to these schools than ever before and finding the application process exceptionally competitive. But these kids represent only a third of the nation’s children. What happens to other two-thirds who have languished in our less than adequate public schools and are ill prepared educationally, never mind financially, to pursue college? (I’m wondering, is this news or is this the way it’s been since the beginning of time and finally someone’s noticing?)
Anyway, I recall a comment made by Tennis Mom last week about her daughter’s rejection from Yale, “I think that needing financial aid these days is an actual advantage.” She feels that her daughter may have been declined admissions because Yale was trying to increase their economic diversity on campus. Their affluence may have been held against them. This may be true and Tennis Mom is fuming. She’s sent her daughter to a premier private schools since Kindergarten and still, Yale won’t have her. But is Tennis Mom’s daughter going to be any the worse for having to accept a place at her third or fourth choice school? I have trouble shedding a tear for someone who gets in to Bucknell or Bowdoin or Duke, even if they have a few rejections to decoupage on their kitchen table.
An article from Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine backs me up on this topic. Journalist Tom Keane points out that talented, bright and ambitious people do well in life, no matter which college they attend. He uses Jack Welsh, former GE exec and UMass alum as an example. He also throws in Boston’s mayor Tom Menino who only attended junior college. I would say that Keane is on target though he doesn’t mention that those talented, bright and ambitious kids who tend to turn out well have a distinct advantage if they are ALSO born into families that make more than the national average of $45,000 a year.
The pundits on NPR imply that, in the interest of economic equality, our nation’s top universities have a social responsibility to reach out to all sectors of society in search of capable students, not just those who can swing the four years’ tuition. They warn that without affording the poor the same educational opportunity afforded the rich, the economic divide in the U.S. will persist and widen. The rich will get richer and the poor get poorer.
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe the financial assistance that schools like Princeton have been known to give some of their students whose parents rake in a mere $150,000 a year (yes, I did say $150,000) could be better used elsewhere, like in full-ride scholarships to students who fall into the lower income bracket. It is my humble opinion that if the Ivies can’t recognize that $150,000 does not a pauper make then we, as a nation, might deserve the economic inequality that plagues us.
Photo of Harvard yard courtesy of Harvard’s website.
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16 Responses to “college or country club”
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Oh, these are thorny issues. My husband, who attended an Ivy, is a professor at a state university that he now believes provides an education just as good as his alma mater.
But not enough parents believe him.
As for the rest, the current administration’s attitude toward educating our kids is shameful, really, as well as self-defeating.
slouching mom- We may all have to come around with our opinions about state schools in the near future.
How does he try to get the word out?
Ok, cce, I graduated from college in 1984 and law school in 88, so don’t give me that crap about being old! As for education, it is what you make of it. I am a product of terrible liberal arts public primary schools (we had no grammar whatsoever until 10th grade — God bless you Dotty Paxton, where ever you are!)and a smallish state university. I still managed to get into a distinguished law school that has graduated several high powered people whose names are household (mine name not being one of them) but the lesson is still there: graduating from Harvard may get you an interview, but if you can’t translate that into actual talent, the job is going elsewhere.
1. If you increase the number of non-paying students, you decrease revenues and force up prices on paying students. No?
2. Another interesting point would be to look back at the highly controversial, 1994 book “The Bell Curve” by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The first part of the book suggests that higher schools are in effect voluntary mating centres based to a large degree upon IQ. Put bluntly, if we breed Harvard kid to Harvard kid and do so for years, what happens? Now being a Harvard kid hasn’t always meant what it means now. Many a mediocre student went to Yale just because his father was head of the CIA. But for the past 40 years the ivies have gotten more meritocratic. So are we accidentally breeding for intelligence? (At least the kind of intelligence that shows up on IQ scores.)
I guess I feel breeding for intelligence is better than breeding to perpetuate the wealth of a few…Also, I’m not sure that offering more full-ride scholarships really means tuition hikes. Rather, it means the middle-class, those that need a little help but not full-ride, are out of luck. I’m not saying this is the solution but it will surely be the result if only full-pay and full scholarship students are desirable applicants. The squeeze on the middle class will result.
Can you email me directly? I’d love to chat with you about MA, writing, etc.
Excuse me while i get to the real heart of your post–at least for me. I’m a little dozy on directions, so is northeast only the News? (York, Jersey, Englad). Iowa is central, right?
As for the drama-trauma of grad school–I seem to be a glutton for it. Just when I thought I was through taking exams, I signed up again.
Let us know what happens.
By Jane - Northeast means New England to me though I’m sure that others will argue that New York and New Jersey fall into the category. I reject NJ and NY, thinking they are just about SOL not being Northeastern enough or Mid-Atlantic enough.
New England is New England. The Northeast is New England plus New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
You want the proof? You can’t handle the proof!
I actually left prestigious Washington University in St. Louis to attend University of Arkansas at Little Rock (I was a victim of marriage on that one). I entered into a Scholars Program at UALR, and I believe I not only got an equal, but superior, education that I would have recieved had I stayed at WU.
As a grad student, I was a National Science Foundation Fellow, and I could pretty much choose where I went to school without much of an admissions process at all because I brought money with me. And I chose University of Missour at Columbia, because it had one of the biggest, most diverse, departments of Biochemistry, particularly of Plant Biochemistry, around and I could actually AFFORD the cost of living in the midwest.
That’s a factor they often don’t compute. The Ivy Leagues and State Ivy Leagues are located in places that are very costly to live, however, the size of the fellowships remains relatively constant. This translates to entering poorly paid postdoctoral positions debt-free, or with crushing amounts of debt accumulated during the average 6 years of graduate school necessary to complete PhD’s nowadays (averaged across disciplines).
And please, don’t get me started on the Bell Curve…
Robbin- Don’t you think some folks gamble that their crushing debt will be made less insurmountable by all the doors that open to them once they utter the name of the esteemed program they graduated from? Or is that the myth that these esteemed programs are hoping to perpetuate by being so damn selective?
I think people do make that gamble. And many may do it unwisely. I think for a few select graduate programs - Fine Arts, JDs, MBAs, perhaps - that it may actually be true. MAY.
But for many other programs I would go for the latter.
Let me put it this way - when applying to graduate school and for grants, I felt myself at NO disadvantage because my bachelors degrees came out of the city college branch of a state university system. My GRE scores alone opened those doors. I guess my conclusion from personal experience is EXACTLY what the Boston Globe concluded. If you are bright and ambitious, you will do well, no matter where you are planted. It would be irony of the first order to think that it is the mediocre that benefit more from a first-class education.
It also did not appear that the PhD’s coming out of my program have any disadvantage in being employed or obtaining prestigious post-doctoral positions. It’s a competitive field in academic research, and the quality of the research ultimately does the talking. And that is only partly opportunity, and largely hustle.
And the “breeding ground” theory put forth by the previous poster? Absurd. Twin studies have shown HUGE variability (40-75%) in intelligence scores. Which indicate that the heredibility of intelligence is likely less than 50%. The homogeneity of lifestyle factors among the elite would play a much larger role than genetics. If we also equate intelligence with success. A shaky equation at best.
Likely the entrenched elite just that - entrenched. As your post seems to implicate - it is a socially-constructed strata that willfully resists intrusion and maintains its power base that way. I think we should be more concerned about how college tuitions in all universities across America are skyrocketing at the same time that we are witnessing record numbers of home foreclosures. I think that we should be more concerned that our public school systems are crumbling from long neglect, making even a decent elementary education beyond the reach of anyone making less than the cost of private tuition will allow.
Rather than worrying about a small number of people agonizing over admission into elite schools, we should be worrying if any children other than those of privilege will be able to attend any college at all. Then we have really lost the American Dream.
Apologies for the editorializing. Struck a nerve.
Those twin studies have shown precisely the opposite of what you say they do. You doubt 50%? Let’s take your numbers. 40-75% variability due to “whatever.” Reverse them and it implies a genetic component of between 60%-25%. Take the average. 42.5% Moreover, if IQ is even mildly inherited, say 20%, multiple generations would cause tremendous differences to emerge.
As for your argument about success equating to intelligence… well I certainly didn’t say that nor would I agree with it. Neither do I suggest that homogenous Ivys are a benefit to society. Indeed I whole-heartedly support affirmative action and a quality education for all children in the United States, legal or otherwise.
Some cites on twin studies and IQ:
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., David T. Lykken, Matthew McGue, Nancy L. Segal, and Auke Tellegen, “Sources of Human Psychological Differences: The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart,” Science, Vol. 250 (1990), pp. 223–228.
Nancy L. Segal, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us about Human Behavior (Dutton, 1999), pp. 135–136.
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., and Matthew McGue, “Familial Studies of Intelligence: A Review,” Science, Vol. 212 (1981), pp. 1055–1059.
Kathleen McCartney, Monica J. Harris, and Frank Bernieri, “Growing Up and Growing Apart: A Developmental Meta-Analysis of Twin Studies,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 107 (1990), pp. 226–237; Eric Turkheimer, Andreana Haley, Mary Waldron, Brian D’Onofrio, and Irving I. Gottesman, “Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children,” Psychological Science, Vol. 14 (2003), pp. 623–628.
Okay, Robbin and Anymouse, clearly my wish for comments has been more than granted. Glad to provoke some thought on the topic but let’s play nice. I think we’re splitting hairs here anyway. It seems we all agree that the American youth of the lower and middle classes are at a disadvantage when it comes to college placement. Also, in the On Point piece someone puts forth the idea that affirmative action based on race should be replaced with affirmative action based on economics. They make the point that privileged kids come in all colors. Not sure I think this is a good idea but it’s food for thought.
My husband & I both attended the same in-state public school (Purdue). We both came from small town high schools. I think we got a well-rounded education. I had classes with scholars, students who were just there to party, athletes who were floating by, and students who came from nothing & were working their ass off! But I think it goes beyond your classroom experiences. We all thrive in different environments.