Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor

I'm not sure that city kids from a black or Latin neighborhood are going to be too fired up about spending four years in a lily-white small town, regardless of what they're told about the statistical correlation to success.

For me, I went out of state to a public university, and what I saw there were a lot of other white middle-class kids from a different Midwestern state than mine. You can imagine how difficult the social adjustment was.

 

What I find most curious is that the low-income high achievers are struggling to do well there.

If they're in a low-income situation, they're already fighting socio-economic factors in multiple places to be doing well. There's a good chance they're not going to a top-end high school, so they're doing the best they can to get the most they can out of the school they're in. So if they can succeed there, why is there a dropoff at the college level? Wouldn't they take the same approach to a third-tier college as they would a public high school with less-than-sterling numbers?

The only obvious factors I see changing are a) the going away from the tight familial clique, if they did go away and b) having to work a lot between classes. Though you'd assume that if they had grades, scores and extracurriculars, they'd get a full ride at Mediocre State or Acceptable A&M.

 

I've never heard of Bowdoin College, either.

My family was probably on the lower end of the "middle income" bracket. I went to the community college in my hometown and then Local U. I got lots of college stuff in the mail towards the end of high school but it never occurred to me that I could go elsewhere.

I don't feel I missed anything. I got out of it what I put into it. I also completely endorse community colleges for the first two years.

 

We're failing a lot of people these days, aren't we?

 

Were you posting about doing away with Head Start, but now you concerned about these students not making it into Randolph-Macon?

 

From a college admissions perspective, as long as you check the right box, your life story really doesn't matter. Harvard gets the same credit for admitting a black kid from an affluent suburban high school as it does for admitting a black kid from rural Mississippi. And that affluent kid will actually pay close to full freight.

So what incentive does the school have to send admissions officers into the hinterlands to search for the high achievers when there are easier and wealthier pickings in the familiar places?

 

The only part of this that generates any interest for me is the part that poor students who stay local tend to struggle some in graduating. The rest of the horseshit about "better colleges" is generally just that - horseshit. Some education paths in some "better" colleges are terrible. Some education paths in "worse" colleges are very good. And since almost all college put little emphasis on the quality of the instruction (vs. the grant money the school can get for research) it is not automatically obvious which is which.

Over the last 30 years, of this there is little doubt: American colleges, as a whole, have stunk to significantly challenge most its students. Foreign students tend to demand a better education, and get it. American-born students tend to not, and don't.

That obviously folds into the study, where obviously high-performing students have the impression they're not high-performing, in part because selective high schools and classes are stuffed to the brim with mediocre students whose parents are good at being hyper proactive.

As always in education, it's not aptitude. It's sheer will.

 

One of the smartest people I've ever known went to Frostburg State because it was close to home and offered him a full ride. He was from a dirt poor family, first generation college, and went to a god awful high school where he had little to no help navigating the process. Guy's test scores/grades/background combo probably would have gotten him a full ride at an Ivy, but there was no one to help show him that possibility.

On the other hand, he's a smart guy and in the middle of a successful career. Just cause the best and brightest don't go to Harvard or Yale, doesn't mean they won't necessarily succeed.

 

You also have to consider the high schools some of these kids go to. That certainly impacts what they do in college. No matter how smart, they just aren't prepared for college work.

 

Absolutely.

It's a matter of getting the information to the students.

 

There has also been pressure on some of the universities with large endowments to spend the interest earned from those endowments, as they are essentially a tax dodge and supposedly not meant to be used to accumulate even more wealth.

Hence the free tuition scholarship plans that have appeared recently from Harvard, Stanford and others in the high-endowment bracket.