{"id":1190,"date":"2005-05-24T11:04:15","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T15:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/05\/24\/education-and-class\/"},"modified":"2005-05-24T11:04:15","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T15:04:15","slug":"education-and-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/05\/24\/education-and-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Education and class"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Today’s Times article on class in America revolved around unraveling
\nthe links between educational attainment and class status in this
\ncountry<\/a>.  The Times has been running a series on the role of class in American society<\/a>
\nfor the last couple of weeks, and it’s been generally excellent. 
\nIt’s been quite good in dealing with the myth that there is no class or
\nthat it’s entirely malleable in our society.  We may not have
\nformal class here, as in the European societies of old and new, and the
\nmovement between classes may be possible, but the series has done a
\ngood job of showing how one chances and changes in life are quite
\nlargely dependent on one’s social status.  Medicine, education,
\nrelationships, military service–our experiences depend largely upon
\nthe combination education, occupation, income, and wealth play, and as
\ntime has gone on, it has become harder in the US to move up that ladder.<\/p>\n

I’m still working out what I think about yesterday’s article on
\nevangelical Protestants’ attempt to move up the class ladder, but more
\non that later this week.<\/p>\n

Here’s the root of the problem, in some sense:<\/p>\n

\n

Put another way, children seem to be following the paths of their
\nparents more than they once did. Grades and test scores, rather than
\nprivilege, determine success today, but that success is largely being
\npassed down from one generation to the next. A nation that believes
\nthat everyone should have a fair shake finds itself with a kind of
\ninherited meritocracy.<\/p>\n

In this system, the students at the best
\ncolleges may be diverse – male and female and of various colors,
\nreligions and hometowns – but they tend to share an upper-middle-class
\nupbringing. An old joke that Harvard’s idea of diversity is putting a
\nrich kid from California in the same room as a rich kid from New York
\nis truer today than ever; Harvard has more students from California
\nthan it did in years past and just as big a share of upper-income
\nstudents.\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is largely true here at Harvard.  Yes, we have some poorer
\nkids, but by and large, our students are solidly middle class.  I
\nknow only a couple of kids who qualify as “poor” (which seems to be
\npretty much in accord with the standard in the article of twice the
\npoverty line, or about $38,000).  To a lesser extent, the same was
\ntrue at Berkeley; where we had poorer kids, they were less able than
\nthe richer kids, because they had not received the math, writing, and
\nscience training that kids at better schools had.  They were more
\nlikely to get lower grades even as they might have tried harder.\n<\/p>\n

\n

“The same score reflects more ability when you come from a less
\nfortunate background,” Mr. Summers, the president of Harvard, said.
\n“You haven’t had a chance to take the test-prep course. You went to a
\nschool that didn’t do as good a job coaching you for the test. You came
\nfrom a home without the same opportunities for learning.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But it
\nis probably not a coincidence that elite colleges have not yet turned
\nthis sentiment into action. Admitting large numbers of low-income
\nstudents could bring clear complications. Too many in a freshman class
\nwould probably lower the college’s average SAT score, thereby damaging
\nits ranking by U.S. News & World Report<\/a>, a leading arbiter of academic prestige. Some colleges, like Emory University<\/a>
\nin Atlanta, have climbed fast in the rankings over precisely the same
\nperiod in which their percentage of low-income students has tumbled.
\nThe math is simple: when a college goes looking for applicants with
\nhigh SAT scores, it is far more likely to find them among well-off
\nteenagers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One thing we in the elite universities could do would be to ignore
\nUS News for a few years.  Seriously, how will even some decrease
\nin rankings affect the Ivies and their private-university
\nequivalents?  Will Stanford and Harvard suffer much for a small
\ndrop?  Few people can turn down the lure of a place like Harvard
\nor Cornell, even for a fast-rising place like Emory.<\/p>\n

The article is striking to me in some sense, because I look at the
\nexperience of my own family.  Both of my parents are the only kids
\nin either of their families to graduate from college (and there are
\nonly two more if you include spouses of the other four children in
\ntheir generation), and none of their parents have four-year
\ndegrees.  They had to pay for college, working up through the
\ncommunity college system, clerking in grocery stores.  My brother
\nand I always assumed (and were expected) that we would go to
\ncollege.  For my cousins, whose parents did not attend college,
\ngraduating high school was an accomplishment.\n<\/p>\n

By and large, my parents’ success was a function of being
\nCalifornians.  California’s system of higher education, though
\nstaggering a bit now, was the great educational equalizer of the late
\ntwentieth century.  It set up a system where at least the top
\nthird of students could go immediately to university and where everyone
\ncould go eventually.\n<\/p>\n

My own class status has risen immensely via my education.  I am
\nin pursuit of a PhD and being a college professor, and even though I
\nmake much less money than many of my family members or my friends about
\nmy age, I maintain the same class status as them primarily via the
\npromise of prestige that the education I have brings.\n<\/p>\n

And I wonder what my role in participating in the system of higher
\neducation should be.  On some level, my advisors would say that I
\nshouldn’t worry too much–just finish and find a job.  And with a
\ndegree from Harvard, one aims toward the elite universities, whether
\npublic or private, not the sort of universities that the individuals
\nprofiled in the article attend or will attend.  But even so, there
\nare trade-offs: at the public universities, I had more experiences
\nwhere the students seemed to benefit and appreciate the work I was
\ntrying to do with them while at Harvard, there are a greater number of
\nthose really talented students who excite and stimulate one’s own
\nresearch and thinking.\n<\/p>\n

\n

In the weeks afterward, his daydreaming about college and his
\nconversations about it with his sister Leanna turned into serious
\nresearch. He requested his transcripts from Radford and from Virginia Highlands Community College<\/a>
\nand figured out that he had about a year’s worth of credits. He also
\ntalked to Leanna about how he could become an elementary school
\nteacher. He always felt that he could relate to children, he said. The
\njob would take up 180 days, not 280. Teachers do not usually get laid
\noff or lose their pensions or have to take a big pay cut to find new
\nwork. <\/p>\n

So the decision was made. On May 31, Andy Blevins says,
\nhe will return to Virginia Highlands, taking classes at night; the
\nGospel Gentlemen are no longer booking performances. After a year, he
\nplans to take classes by video and on the Web that are offered at the
\ncommunity college but run by Old Dominion<\/a>, a Norfolk, Va., university with a big group of working-class students. <\/p>\n

“I
\ndon’t like classes, but I’ve gotten so motivated to go back to school,”
\nMr. Blevins said. “I don’t want to, but, then again, I do.”<\/p>\n

He thinks he can get his bachelor’s degree in three years. If he gets it at all, he will have defied the odds.\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would love to have a motivated student like Andy Blevins.  He
\nand I would drive each other crazy, because I’d push him as hard as I
\ncan to do more and better, and he’d push back, to make me become a
\nbetter teacher, I think.  But in a place with many students like
\nhim, there’d be much less opportunity to have colleagues like I am used
\nto here, and I wonder if the research and writing would atrophy.\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Times article on class in America revolved around unraveling the links between educational attainment and class status in this country.  The Times has been running a series on the role of class in American society for the last couple of weeks, and it’s been generally excellent.  It’s been quite good in dealing with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}