"Scandals of Higher Education" - The New York Review of Books

There's a very interesting (and long) review of a number of current books on higher education in the New York Review of Books.  The whole article is worth reading, but here are some sections that jumped out at me (my commentary in [brackets]):

...Ninety percent of Harvard students come from families earning more than the median national income of $55,000, and Harvard's dean of admissions was quoted in the Crimson a few months earlier defining "middle-income" Harvard families as those earning between $110,000 and $200,000... [Wow]

...But today's students are richer on average than their predecessors. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steady— around 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully half. If the upscale shops and restaurants near campus are any indication, the trend has continued if not accelerated. And if the sample is broadened to include the top 150 colleges, the percentage of students from the bottom quartile drops to 3 percent.^[2]  In short, there are very few poor students at America's top colleges, and a large and growing number of rich ones...

...While these proposals are being debated by presidents and trustees—at least one hopes they are debating them—an odor of hypocrisy has gathered in the gap between academic rhetoric and academic reality. The American university tends to be described these days by foe and friend alike as the Alamo of the left—a last fortress for liberal holdouts in a society that has pretty much routed liberals from politics and public life. But how persuasive are testimonials of devotion to equity and democracy when they come from institutions that are usually beyond the reach of anyone without lots of money?  [Good point]...

...his* main point is a fair one: campus liberals far prefer the soft issues of racial and gender diversity to such hard issues as the effect on American working families of cheap foreign labor or the gross inequities of a public school system funded by local property taxes, or, closer to home, the failure of their own institutions to recruit and support more talented students with no money. I have met very few faculty members who, even as they agitate for far-flung social causes, care to look closely at the admissions policies of their own institutions...

..For students, taking intellectual chances is risky as they compete for places in professional schools that regard grades as all-important. As Harvard's former dean Harry Lewis sums up the matter:

Universities affect horror when students attend college in the hope of becoming financially successful, but they offer students neither a coherent view of the point of college education nor any guidance on how they might discover for themselves some larger purpose in life. [Also a good point]

...

*  Walter Benn Michaels, author of The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.

(Hat tip to the History News Network)

Comments

[Moominpapa]

This shows an all too common NIMBY ("Not in my back yard") attitude about causes. It is easier (safer) to espouse causes that agitate for someone ELSE'S changed behavior - rather than grapple with issues that would change your own behaviour or everyday life. Why would professors want to change their situation, pandering to the rich student populations and building those comfortable upper-middle-class communities with their comfortable aesthetics and amenities? Individuals on either side of the political aisle would rather tackle something in someone else's back yard. You have to wonder, even, if most abolitionists in the early 1800s would have been as engaged if slavery had still been a part of life in the North... From Massechusetts it was safe and easy to fulminate on the injustices taking place in the South. "There is nothing new under the sun." People are and will always be the same. Some individuals stand out and stand up (though even they have ulterior motives in so many cases) but as a herd we are remarkably predictable.
One final remark - college used to be the exclusive realm of the wealthy. The GI bill made the largest demographic shift in this. I wonder if the current swing is really just a return to economic/cultural normal after the anomoly of the 50s and 60s and one follow-on generation beyond.

[M Light]

So, if this is a return to normal, colleges are not only being conservative but they're actually being reactionary (return to a past of privilege and power).