<p>bethievt, I'm right with you on your post #18, and re-read it several times in relation to mini's post#17 above it. If mini's serious there, my jaw is still dropping.</p>
<p>Look, I don't want to sound all crunchy granola here, but I hold some ideals after all these years. I can't believe that every decision on campus is ruled and measured by money. Diversity is its own value. Middle-class families include earners with professions such as these: schoolteacher, police, clergy, civil servant, sole proprietor business, nurse. It will benefit students whose parents are either desperately poor or fabulously wealthy to meet more kids whose families perform these functions in their communities. It's just another story to tell.
The child of a prominent judge has one set of experiences, but would benefit greatly to room with the child of a policewoman and hear how their evenings normally proceed at home. The 6-figure-earning doctor's child might learn a lot from meeting the nurse at a parent's weekend.
If a child comes from hard-scrabble poverty, it might be more reassuring to meet more kids from the next tier up than always have dazzling wealth in their face. They want upward social mobility, which might turn out to be a profession they perceive as helpful (in the sense of community service) rather than strictly dollar-producing. How can we presume?
Diversity is educational for students, and that sentence I just wrote is so obvious I can't believe I'm needing to even write it. Middle class homes are the peanut butter between the upper and lower pieces of bread, and might help unify a campus socially. Perhaps we'll find out some surprising bits of data, over the long-term, in terms of various at-risk behaviors where the middle class might not engage in them as much? Who knows what we'll find until more arrive and unpack their unmatched luggage.</p>