Closing the great college divide

By Mark Franek

For 10 years, I have taught English and writing to high school students and first-year college students at private institutions in Philadelphia. There are very few truisms in education, but I have one to share that most teachers and administrators rarely talk about because it's so darn depressing.

Rich kids do significantly better in school than schoolchildren who are poor.

There are always exceptions. Teach long enough and you'll be blown away by that poor kid who outperforms her richer and better prepared peers. Likewise, you'll be frustrated by that rich kid who has all the advantages in the world but who can't (or won't) knock a noun against a verb to save his academic life.

But by and large, the truism holds: More family money generally means higher expectations, better teachers, and more academic success all around. I wish it weren't so.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education and the Education Trust, a nonprofit, independent think-tank, reported that 75 percent of young people who grew up in high-income families earn at least a bachelor's degree by age 24. In contrast, only 9 percent of students who grew up in low-income families earn a bachelor's degree by that age.

This means that more than 90 percent of low-income students just stop going to class, resigning themselves perpetually to nongraduate status. The loss of earning potential over the course of their lives should not be underestimated. Surely they will suffer. So will their children.

Some private colleges and universities with huge endowments have begun to offer 100 percent free tuition to low-income students. This is laudable.

But Harvard and company can pick from the nation's crop of the best-and-brightest each year.

What about the vast majority of poor students in this country who went to subpar schools and amassed mediocre academic records?

There are no easy solutions for helping poor people climb up and out of poverty. No Child Left Behind calls for quality teaching and a quality learning environment for all children. But without lots of money, applied intelligently and consistently over lots of time, how is this goal anything more than empty rhetoric?

The government continues to give grants and low-interest loans to students who figure out how to apply for them. But the money is not keeping up with the cost of tuition. The average total charges (including room, board, tuition and fees), of a four-year public institution is $13,589 a year, but that jumps to an average of $32,307 a year for a private one.

Remember, these are

averages

.

As a first-year writing teacher at a private university in Philadelphia, I see firsthand the difficulties some students face.

Last semester I taught a young woman who is the first person in her family to go to college. The university has given her an opportunity. But we shouldn't stop there. We need to get her engaged in campus life, emphasize the quality of her undergraduate-teaching experience, and monitor her progress closely.

Many low-income students lack the academic skills and social competencies that their better-educated peers take for granted. Many low-income students also lack the economic confidence that comes with never having to worry about money, from big-ticket items (such as tuition) to the unexpected smaller bills that accumulate in college.

College textbooks, for instance, can easily cost over $100 per semester (rarely are these charges included in any school's tuition). Low-income students often experience the shock of these bills only a few days or hours before their first college class.

Furthermore, professors who begin class assuming that all students own a computer and know how to post to a classroom blog only make low-income students feel more alienated and unable to compete with their peers.

Even for students who arrive on campus well-prepared, willing to work hard, and blissfully unaware of tuition costs, college is no cakewalk.

The social scene can alternate quickly between distracting and empowering, with distracting often winning the day. The weekly class schedule can appear deceptively free and open-ended. Roommate issues and dorm life can cause significant challenges now that both genders are sharing many of the same facilities.

Most parents - even those with undergraduate degrees - would not recognize or understand how to navigate through the contemporary college environment. But the lesson should be the same for all children: Don't quit!

It takes a village to raise a child, the proverb goes. In America, the village is made up of parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians. It's a rude analogy, but at least this much we can agree on: Higher education really is the great equalizer, but not enough low-income students matriculate into colleges, much less graduate.