<p>Jay Mathews issues an interesting challenge: "Send me the name and contacts of any gifted and motivated students you know who have been unable to go to college because of money. If their stories check out, I will . . . help them get where they want to go."</p>
<p>I’m smelling a new book from Jay Mathews.</p>
<p>Two things - what is the definition of “gifted and movtivated”? Only those who would be picked up for Ivy’s - “4.5 gpa, 8 AP’s with all 5’s and a 2350 SAT who has been a mother to 5 younger siblings since the age of 12 while tutoring middle school kids, making the state track and field championships and student body president”?</p>
<p>These kids are obviously going to Ivy’s, and other full pay colleges or will get sufficient financial aid for their state university honors program, esp if they are from a state with cheap in-state tuition.</p>
<p>In other cases - nearly every student has access to a Community college where they can work and attend school and afford it even with meager financial aid.</p>
<p>The question isn’t so much that the price of higher ed is forcing poor students out of the market but that it doesn’t allow less well off student to necessarily be able to afford the college of their choice. There is a difference.</p>
<p>I don’t think he’s defined impoverished either.</p>
<p>and what does he define as ‘college’. that word only encompasses around 3,500 or so different places from junior colleges in arkansas to harvard.</p>
<p>Here’s the article that Matthews is referring to:</p>
<p>[The</a> Universities in Trouble - The New York Review of Books](<a href=“http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22673]The”>The Universities in Trouble | Andrew Delbanco | The New York Review of Books)</p>
<p>I think the difference between the two is their definition of the “standards of college admission.” A gifted student like the one that JustAMom described, which fits Matthews’s view, would easily be able to find a free college eduction if they are in the lowest economic class. But, I think the original article raises an important question about what happens to those students of the lowest economic class who preformed well in school, but weren’t quite up to Ivy League par. The students with 1000-1200 SAT Scores, 3.0-3.3 GPA’s, etc… that could do well in college, but miss the merit requirements for public universities’ merit scholarships and are unable to gain admission to a top-tier university where they could go for free under financial aid.</p>
<p>He says in the article that the usual situation is for such highly gifted and motivated students to get an outpouring of community support, and that colleges also actively recruit these students.</p>
<p>I don’t like the tone of the article. Something about it really rubs me the wrong way. Maybe the implication that those students who shy away from college are not nearly gifted or motivated enough to rate attention? I think part of the problem I have with his qualification is that it is, by definition, impossible to meet: if they were motivated and gifted, wouldn’t they have found a way?</p>
<p>@Poisonous: Exactly. One doesn’t have to be among the best and brightest to contribute to society. Yet disadvantaged students who are talented, but not among the best and brightest, frequently fall through the cracks for the reasons you noted. We miss out on these students’ potential contributions in the likely event that they have no way to attend university.</p>
<p>Another problem is that even when money is not a direct barrier to attending university, its indirect effects can make it difficult to obtain a university degree. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>As the article correctly points out, the preparation provided by high schools is a factor. Which K-12 schools one can attend depends on the attendance area in which one can afford to live and on whether one can afford private schools. As such, students from families with limited funds may have to attend a low-quality school. These schools may not provide adequate academic preparation to succeed at university.</p></li>
<li><p>In the communities where people with limited funds can afford to live, there is usually significant social pressure to fail. Resentment, or worse, is likely to be directed at the few young people who see university as a way out. Such communities also usually have a widespread belief that jobs requiring a university degree are unattainable.</p></li>
<li><p>When a student has to live in a violent neighborhood because of lack of money, personal growth is hindered. Life in a violent neighborhood may as well be a different universe than life in a middle-class neighborhood. The ways of being one must adopt to survive in such neighborhoods are counterproductive in a university setting. It’s also likely that someone growing up in such a neighborhood is too traumatized to function academically.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>If money causes any of the foregoing problems, the question of whether or not enough money exists to pay for university may be moot.</p>
<p>Very good article. People with a 2.7 and an 840 (or 1260, for the new SAT) shouldn’t be going to college. They are simply not smart enough to benefit from a serious college education. It’s nice for them if their parents can afford to send them, but that’s a waste of their resources. Not my business. Spending the state’s resources to subsidize people with a 2.7 and and 1260 is a waste of taxpayer dollars. As for people who are truly qualified for college, they get all sorts of support in their endeavors if they are poor.</p>
<p>@bartleby: Even if one agrees with your assertion, the problem is not limited to those with 2.7 GPA’s and 1260/2400 SAT’s. Admission to top universities which meet full need is only realistic for the very best students. Merit scholarships are generally only offered to students at the top of the university’s applicant pool. Many students with GPA’s well above 2.7 and SAT’s well above 1260 nonetheless cannot avail themselves of either option.</p>
<p>I responded to Jay via email. I agreed with the overall premise of the article. However, he took a couple swipes at teachers and school administrators in his story. I am not a teacher, but I do believe that teachers get a little too much of the blame for not turning out better students. Parental expectation and involvement is just as important as the teacher, if not more so. Jay Matthew’s article, like most others, lays the blame at the feet of the teachers, administrators and schools, without even seeming to consider that parents are involved in this equation.</p>
<p>Having read a lot of Mathews articles, I don’t think he is denigrating any student who is capable of going to college; he’s saying, I think, that kids who are able to go to college can afford to go there, either by getting aid, or going to a community college, or a low-cost state school, etc. He’s not saying that they can go to Harvard, or wherever they want–just to some kind of real college.</p>
<p>same old guilt ridden upper middle class nonsense. Sure if you’re really poor and
have sat’s over 2000 and an “A” average you can do pretty well with some good
advice, but that’s probably a very small percentage of apps. The biggest problem
is with poor kids who are only pretty good, maybe 1800+sats and B averages.
A lot more kids in that category but in many states there’s no room for them in the inn. Commuting to the local state u or comm. college is the only option and even that comes
with significant work and loans. Mathews article is deceptive and elitist. Another person who can’t really come to terms with what is happening in college land. The rapidly increasing stratification of college access based on income.</p>
<p>“The rapidly increasing stratification of college access based on income.”</p>
<p>That’s idiotic. College access for intelligent poor/lower-middle class people has become immensely easier over time, rather than the opposite. That’s just a fact.</p>
<p>It was made easier with the Gi bill of the 50’s and then again with government
aid programs of the sixties an seventies, but unfortunately college cost has
mushroomed and aid has stagnated creating the situation we have today. In
my state even the lower level states are not accessible to lower income students,
haven’t been for some time and now that is spreading into the middle class. I
suspect that’s whats generating the current angst.</p>
<p>“Admission to top universities which meet full need is only realistic for the very best students. Merit scholarships are generally only offered to students at the top of the university’s applicant pool. Many students with GPA’s well above 2.7 and SAT’s well above 1260 nonetheless cannot avail themselves of either option.”</p>
<p>Bullcrap. UC Riverside, a decent public university where you can get in with a 3.2 and a 1550, will give a kid whose parents make $40,000, $15,000 in grants and another $5,000 in subsidized loans that don’t have to be paid back until graduation. Although the stated cost of a UC education is around $26k, I go to a UC in a more expensive area than Riverside and make do on way less than $26k. Room, board, books, and tuition at Riverside come out to around $18-20k, and less if you move out of the dorms into a private apartment. If this poor, if middling, student works part time during the year and full time in the summer, as many do, he can leave Riverside debt-free (which is better than the case for many middle-class families taking out second mortgages to put their truly exceptional kids through Ivies.) This does not require being exceptional and getting into Harvard on a full-ride.</p>
<p>@ bartleby, the majority of kids who come from very low income areas don’t know about government programs for people with low income. They just look at the price of college and decide there is no way for them to go, so they don’t even bother trying. </p>
<p>Plus, even with the biggest government grant for low income (Pell Grant), it still only covers about 1/4 of a state u’s price tag. Even if a university costs 15k a year, 40k of debt for someone with very low income to graduate with is a tough pill to swallow.</p>
<p>“It was made easier with the Gi bill of the 50’s and then again with government
aid programs of the sixties an seventies, but unfortunately college cost has
mushroomed and aid has stagnated creating the situation we have today. In
my state even the lower level states are not accessible to lower income students,
haven’t been for some time and now that is spreading into the middle class. I
suspect that’s whats generating the current angst.”</p>
<p>Yet, somehow, more and more people are going to college. Hmm…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Two things. One, yeah more people are going to college because it’s terribly difficult to get a job right now without a college education. There use to be three main options out of high school: college, factories, and armed services. Now, the only major option is college as our factories are gone and kids are avoiding the war. So, all of those kids that would be going to the latter two are going to be going to college. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have afforded it before, it just means that they didn’t want to go for whatever reason. </p>
<p>Two, our population is growing. As populations grow, so does the amount of people wanting higher education. Hmm…</p>
<p>In my state the coa of the flagship is around $25,000. At slightly under
$40,000 in income you can expect around $7,000 in grants and another
$5500 in loans, leaving a gap of around $12,000, plus books, etc. It may
be doable for some but for most kids they are going to turn that down.
Just too big a gap, some small issue and you outta there. it’s kind of the
same thing that Matthew’s is doing - presenting a case for the exceptional
student and then pretending everything’s ok for everyone else. Just doesn’t
fly in the real world</p>
<p>i don’t know if more and more people are going to college but I suspect
if they are, it’s to the local cc.</p>