Americas Great Working-Class Colleges

[applegrove]

David Leonhardt at the NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/sunday/americas-great-working-class-colleges.html

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The heyday of the colleges that serve America’s working class can often feel very long ago. It harks back to the mid-20th century, when City College of New York cost only a few hundred dollars a year and was known as the “Harvard of the proletariat.” Out West, California built an entire university system that was both accessible and excellent.

More recently, these universities have seemed to struggle, with unprepared students, squeezed budgets and high dropout rates. To some New Yorkers, “City College” is now mostly a byword for nostalgia.

It should not be.

Yes, the universities that educate students from modest backgrounds face big challenges, particularly state budget cuts. But many of them are performing much better than their new stereotype suggests. They remain deeply impressive institutions that continue to push many Americans into the middle class and beyond — many more, in fact, than elite colleges that receive far more attention.

Where does this optimistic conclusion come from? The most comprehensive study of college graduates yet conducted, based on millions of anonymous tax filings and financial-aid records. Published Wednesday, the study tracked students from nearly every college in the country (including those who failed to graduate), measuring their earnings years after they left campus. The paper is the latest in a burst of economic research made possible by the availability of huge data sets and powerful computers.

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[LisaM]

1. I think this is right. I won't name the colleges but..

about a year ago a friend of mine was invited to do a poetry reading with another writer as part of a series at a mid-size commuter college. The college is in the shadow of a prestigious, world-renowned University (that I actually attended).

With all the pressure to recruit STEM majors and for college degrees to translate into jobs and paychecks, I think that the liberal arts are getting pushed aside. I know professors (just retired) at the University of Washington who were both in the history department and fear that it, and the English department, and probably a couple of others, are going to shrivel up. I worry myself about where the English majors will go, the ones that come from small towns and need to find a community of other liberal arts majors where they can just wrestle with the questions that liberal arts majors do?

Well, the answer to that question last year was Midsize U. There were a few hundred students in attendance. Two had been chosen to write papers on the influence the two poets had had on their lives, which they bravely stood up and read. The kids in the audience paid attention. One of them, a large bearded guy, wiped away tears at a poem about the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. It was a two-day event and I didn't see any drop off in attendance the second day. They were excited and engaged and I don't think anyone worried whether they'd be tested on the event.

So I had a glimmer of hope that there are still academic refuges out there. We just have to adjust our thinking about where they are. College really should be about learning, anyway, just as much as jobs. Even if some of the kids I saw at that reading go on to careers in engineering or business or medicine, you can't tell me that experience didn't help them. We really need these lesser known colleges. I agree, they are doing a fantastic job with little acknowledgement or reward.