Daily Kos: NYT Bombshell: College Is Fortifying Class Barriers

The NYT:

For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall
by JASON DePARLE

...Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor?s degrees, according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.

While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead.

Likely reasons include soaring incomes at the top and changes in family structure, which have left fewer low-income students with the support of two-parent homes. Neighborhoods have grown more segregated by class, leaving lower-income students increasingly concentrated in lower-quality schools. And even after accounting for financial aid, the costs of attending a public university have risen 60 percent in the past two decades. Many low-income students, feeling the need to help out at home, are deterred by the thought of years of lost wages and piles of debt...

?It?s becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder,? said Sean Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford. ?What we?re talking about is a threat to the American dream.?

Another bombshell finding:

Matthew M. Chingos of the Brookings Institution has found that low-income students finish college less often than affluent peers even when they outscore them on skills tests. Only 26 percent of eighth graders with below-average incomes but above-average scores go on to earn bachelor?s degrees, compared with 30 percent of students with subpar performances but more money.

The article follows the lives of three young women from Galveston--Angelica Gonzales who attended Emory University, Melissa O?Neal, who went to Texas State, and Bianca Gonzalez, who enrolled in community college. ?All three ended up screwed, and only one is still in school.

The reasons for the waning of their once bright prospects are complex and myriad. Some and personal, and some are clearly institutional. Emory is notorious for recruiting minority students, promising them (and all low-income students) generous financial aid, and under-delivering. Some reasons are deeply class-based and cultural.

Income inequality is clearly implicated, for, "[a] generation ago, families at the 90th percentile had five times the income of those at the 10th percentile. Now they have 10 times as much." The article elucidates, and spells out something very troubling that touches on community colleges:

Among the perils that low-income students face is ?under-matching,? choosing a close or familiar school instead of the best they can attend.

?The more selective the institution is, the more likely kids are to graduate,? said Mr. Chingos, the Brookings researcher. ?There are higher expectations, more resources and more stigma to dropping out.?

Bianca was under-matched. She was living at home, dating her high-school boyfriend and taking classes at Galveston College. A semester on the honor roll only kept her from sensing the drift away from her plan to transfer to a four-year school.

Her grandfather?s cancer, and chemotherapy treatments, offered more reasons to stay. She had lived with him since her father had died. Leaving felt like betrayal. ?I thought it was more important to be at home than to be selfish and be at school,? she said.

The idea that education can be ?selfish? ? a belief largely alien among the upper-middle class ? is one poor students often confront, even if it remains unspoken.

I have witnessed this in my own life and it is prevalent. I was pressured to financially support my abusive parents when I couldn't even find a job and struggled to get into college. My sister abandoned a full-ride scholarship at a private university to care for one who was dying. She may never graduate, certainly not from that university.

There is also the alienation that comes from education--that through it, you're becoming 'too good' for everyone else.

But some of us overcome these problems. Some of us also win the lottery. That's damning education with faint praise.

The cost of a college education at a public university (the route I took) has risen 60% in the past two decades. ?If universities are not even hiring tenured faculty and using low-paid adjuncts, we have to wonder, what is happening to the centers of some of America's proudest research and social mobility?

Read this true horror story and weep. Read how Angelica's mother was on disaster relief because of Hurricane Ike and Emory's financial aid department demanded information about a father she never saw, and assumed Angelica under-reported the income of her mother (who works at Wal-mart) by $15,000, expecting her to cough up the difference in a single year. That's part of the $60,000 she now has to pay off, working as a furniture store clerk. Read how Bianca and Melissa's dreams were crushed.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/24/1173603/-NYT-Bombshell-College-Is-Fortifying-Class-Barriers

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