Elite Colleges Open New Door to Poor Youths
What a wonderful story about am amazing young man! Also, kudos to Amherst and the other colleges that are making a push to accept more economically disadvantaged students. It is the shame of our nation -- supposedly the land of opportunity -- that 75% of the students at top colleges come from top-income-quartile households, 15% from the 2nd quartile, 7% from the 3rd quartile and a microscopic 3% from the bottom 25% of households.
My only critique of the universities behind this laudable effort is that, to some extent, they're shutting the barn door after the horse has fled. The main reason there are so few poor and minority students at top colleges is NOT lack of funds -- though it is certainly among the top 5 reasons (as the 4th slide below shows, college is becoming increasingly unaffordable). Instead, the dearth of such students is due to the fact that there are very few low-income students who are qualified to attend college of any sort, much less a top one.
If you are poor and/or minority in this country, odds are very high that you attend a lousy school with low-quality teachers and even lower expectations. The tragic outcome can be clearly seen in the last slide at the end of this email. Look at the three bars for Latinos and blacks -- the college-ready students are going to college; the problem is that only a tiny minority are qualified.
Now, in fairness, one might ask what universities are supposed to do about this? My answer: use their power and influence (which is immense -- when I was a student there, Harvard President Derek Bok was ranked among the 20 most influential people in America) to champion meaningful school reform. For example, of the seven school listed in the article below, three (Amherst, Harvard and Williams) are based in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has some of the finest charter schools in the country (KIPP Lynn, Roxbury Prep, MATCH, etc.), which could provide a pipeline of students that these schools are desperately seeking, yet this pipeline is currently severely restricted due to unfavorable charter school legislation. To my knowledge, these universities have not lifted a finger to help charter schools, either legislatively or in other ways (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). In fact, in my 18 years of involvement with the school reform movement, I can't recall a single article about a president of a top university calling for genuine school reform! GRRRR!
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Elite Colleges Open New Door to Poor Youths
By SARA RIMER
MAY. 27, 2007AMHERST, Mass. — The discussion in the States of Poverty seminar here at Amherst College was getting a little theoretical. Then Anthony Abraham Jack, a junior from Miami, asked pointedly, "Has anyone here ever actually seen a food stamp?"
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:23 PM
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