Ivory Towers, etc.

Something I've never really understood is the relationship between college and socioeconomic status, particularly in the changing rates of college attendance over the past 50 years.

Today, college attendance - not withstanding the general drumbeat equating it with economic success - has come to signify upper socioeconomic status.  While it certainly has currency in the marketplace, I wonder whether much of the actual association with it has more to do with its socioeconomic correlates: family income & education, and individual motivation.  I'm not sure where, but recently I heard/read that the vast majority of Ivy League students come form families making over $200k a year.

College obviously signifies more than mere status.  You can reasonably trust a college graduate to have good reasoning skills, exposure to a modicum of historical thought, as well as some degree of intellectual desire.  However, much of this can have more to do with the family and peer groups within which one has traveled. 

If you go back 50 years, far fewer people attended college.  Yet there still would have been family and peer groups that produced individuals with what we now associate with college education.  Sure, they didn't take college-level courses - yet they no doubt were still voracious readers and possessed the critical-thinking skills that allowed them to make daily social interaction and personal reflection a higher-order experience.

An interesting question might be what effect has this increased college attendance has had on social segregation, in that individuals with proclivities towards higher-order thinking and intellectual curiosity could now self-select into more rarefied social groupings, organized at least by economic affiliation, if not by shared cultural interests formed in no small part by college-going cultural communities.  This would be seen in the "college-town" phenomena, where veritable islands of higher-order* cultural progressivism and experimentation existed within a larger geographic sea of traditional and conservative norms.

*My use of "higher-order" here is damning (as much to myself as anyone).  I accept the conceit that higher equals better, or at least more important - to a degree.  Because what I mean by "higher" is a meta-analysis that can only come from increased consciousness both of past and present.  A sort of cultural geometry exists that literally requires amassing perspective and increasing "viewing angle".  I tend to be what you might call conscious-ist: I generally feel that increased knowledge and awareness is a good thing.  I suppose there is a good deal of the Platonic ideal in this judgement.

Interestingly, this may really now be getting at the root of class and cultural resentment.  Because the idea that "higher is usually better" implies the reverse, that lower is usually worse.  So what then to make of that which is derived from lower-order knowledge or thought?

Well, maybe I ought to back up a moment.  To be clear, I am only talking about knowledge/consciousness/awareness, not action.  It can certainly be the case that pure reliance on knowledge itself can limit one's expression, and even one's acquisition of more knowledge; "just because you can play all those notes, it doesn't mean you should".  I think one of the great things to come out of cultural postmodernism has been the embrace of the "low" as a legitimate form of expression.  Yet the crucial difference is the meta - the knowledge that the "low" is merely one form, relative to its position, and that other forms exist.  It is the knowledge that is important, not the action.

One of the lessons post-modernism has taught us is that the high is also relative.  It is here that power-dynamics come in to play.  The platonic ideal of those in possession of the light of truth must question how they came to possess it, and instead of self-congratulation, holding themselves in high regard, be humbled by the task of uncovering how it came to be that they came to find the light while others did not.

There is a great deal of bitterness on the right and a sense that the left - the "liberal elite" - looks down on them.  It is an interesting notion because it is partially true, but works both ways - do not these aggrieved people look down on the left?  I think there there are a couple of things going on here.  First, there is a definite positional, hierarchical relationship between the cultural values being debated.  (As I stated before, if we're talking about degree of knowledge/consciousness of the relative nature of truth, the left's position can literally be said to be geometrically "higher".)

Second, there is an economic implication for power dynamics - "learnin'" - that goes back to the dawn of civilization.  There are the haves and the have-nots of knowledge/consciousness.  Furthermore, the "knowledge haves", to the degree that they have insinuated themselves into any system of elite intellectualism (whether through schooling or social organization), have traditionally been white collar, or at least not involved in industry of brute strength.  Their contemplative natures represent - so goes the perception, with a good deal of truth - a sort of social luxury, or frivolity.  To the have-nots, they seem little more than peacocks, parasitically lolling about in a land of abstract ideals, while "real" people do all the heavy lifting.

This is no doubt true.  Yet it is also false, and suffers a revanchist motivation that obscures proper cognitive analysis.  Because first of all, there have always been individuals that are more interested in intellectual pursuits, while others more interested in that of the physical, or socially important.  It is literally true that these folks will not possess the same consciousness of a particular subject, and thus have less "expertise".  But we all can't be surgeons, or auto mechanics.  Civilization is built on a division of labor.  Second, intellectual pursuit is also the backbone of civilization.  And while Plato argued that an intelligentsia run affairs of state and culture, democracy has completely rejected that notion.  Certainly our founders were incredibly learned men, and spent most of their time in intellectual pursuits.  It is virtually agreed upon by all that true democracy requires an educated public.  Can there ever be too much education?

And so today we have a situation where higher education has never been more democratic.  Interestingly, most of the voices you hear decrying this actually come from the right, ironically seeking to make education more exclusive.  And yet higher education is overwhelmingly liberal - at least its professors are.  And so to is its export of ideas - filtered out not only through graduates, but through papers and policy groups, as well as through journalism, which relies on its massive bank of credentialed "authorities" for expert commentary, not to mention the college-educated journalists themselves.

This dynamic - academia and journalism - works as one of the great engines of social reflection and progress.  The mission of both entities is explicitly one that is progressive in nature, in that it seeks to critically analyze and reflect on knowledge, seeking to create more in the process.  There is a reason it is called "higher", not "lower" education. 

Is it no wonder then, that its resulting formulations and conceptions of our world would be innately progressive?  William F. Buckley once wrote both in defense and statement of conservative principle (and I'm paraphrasing), that we have solved most of the major social problems.  A better argument for intellectual complacency would be difficult to make.  He said this also, I believe, around forty years ago - a time I would hope most people would not really want to return to.  Certainly we have in many ways become worse-off, but there is no clear way of saying that this was the result of progressive social inquiry.  To be sure, we certainly wouldn't want to be better of [I]not knowing[/I] certain things about ourselves.  Yet I wonder if that statement may not be more controversial than I give conservatives credit for.

It is a general given nowadays that there exists a large split between the right and left on intellectual vs. anti-intellectual lines.  There is certainly much evidence of this in the rhetoric of politicians, as well as pundits.  I imagine that the right isn't opposed to what it feels is genuine intellectual pursuit, but merely opposes what it feels is a take-over of intellectual institutions such as the press and academia by liberals, hence a "liberal elite".  Yet this opens them up to criticism that their critique is less substantive, and more an irrational rejection of real truths that these institutions have uncovered, which align with left-wing values.  Because of course, as with the tendency for conspiracy theories to thrive in cognitive blind-spots, if established authorities are existentially suspect, and claims they make that might give dissonance to one's prior belief, it is perfectly logical to dismiss them as "biased". 

Ironically, this opens the door to a form of relativism, albeit a factual relativism - not the moral relativism that the cultural right has always criticized the left for.  Interestingly, factual relativism requires the denial of facts, while moral relativism denies absolute, metaphysical authority.  (Moral relativism in practice is actually incredibly rare: most simply argue that morals are relative to human culture, and not that no morals can ever exist.  I've actually never encountered anyone who believes the latter).

In the end, the right-left, socio-economic, cultural split may have more to do with cognition than anything.  Rates of college attendance aren't much different on the right and left.  Given the degree to which college professors, as well as journalists tend to be liberal, one might assume that the conservative response is simply to discount these authorities - relying on a cognitive model that reduces their authority.

Closing the College Achievement Gap

There is an understanding implicit in the city college and state university systems, and to a lesser degree (through scholarships) at private universities, that diversity is good for higher education.  Not just racially, but in broader terms providing a hand up to those who are willing to put in the effort required to succeed.  This is no where more clear than the city college model, where almost anyone is accepted, and remedial courses and support is built in from day one.  While less so at the state university level (I don't believe they offer remedial courses), there is still a community ethos and more attempts are made to promote diversity - especially in the subsidized tuition.

We have known for a while now that disadvantaged students at these institutions are much more likely to fail, even despite attempts at support and intervention.  Some students are probably beyond help, whether due to financial, cognitive or emotional limitations that are too great.  But the degree to which the students "just aren't cut out for college" is over-assumed.  There are structural problems at the institutional level that, were they resolved, many more students would find success. 

To the degree to which adequate support is unavailable, these students are at the mercy of success in the classroom; whatever outside pressures come to bear, a failing grade is going to be the last thing many of them see before they return to the workforce, sans-degree.  This places the professor in the difficult position of handing out what, in essence, are college death-sentences.  It would make sense that this could result in grade inflation.  The logic is likely that, considering the hardship the student faces, there is a social injustice in giving them a failing grade.  If inflation is implemented, even marginally, that student might find a way to make it in the end.

Of course, at the system level, this can be pathological.  Standards are gradually reduced, which is unfair to all students.  Getting an inflated grade in one class might give the student a false sense of efficacy, setting them up for failure later on, in another class.  At city colleges, this pressure is lessened by the existence of extensive support: classes are far cheaper, night courses are widely available, failing students can be sent to a writing lab, or remedial courses.  At the state or private level, few of these options are going to exist, and failure will be quick.  However, admission at these institutions will have already removed at-risk students through stricter admissions.  At city college, as they accept anyone, the demand for support services is all the more crucial.

Matt Yglesias points out that there are many models that have shown great success in supporting students, and could theoretically be instituted at every level of academia.  He links to Monica Potts:

A new program at the University of North Carolina pairs low-income students with faculty and peer mentors, monitors their grades, and instills them with basic job-hunting skills like business etiquette. Graduation rates for program participants were 17 percent higher than for students in the control group. Low-income students simply need more resources, and that’s as true for students at the college level as it is for those in elementary and high school. The kinds of schools most likely to serve lower-income students, though, often have the fewest resources. And state-level higher-education funds are vulnerable as states shrink their costs in a difficult budgetary environment.

Yglesias writes:

It’s worth underscoring how perverse the allocation of resources inside American higher education is. We expend the most time, money, and effort on helping the set of high school graduates who need the least help, even though these very same people tend overwhelmingly to come from families who have the most resources (in terms of both money and social capital) with which to help them. It’s nuts.

An important thing to note here is that, assuming the students are academically equivalent, there are still going to be large disparities in student capital (human+social capital). This means anything from navigation of campus norms, peer-group isolation, parent support, financial issues, etc.

Then, in situations where the academic equivalence is not there (usually in city college), students are going to be taking remedial courses and in many cases the “tricks” that may have worked in high school just won’t cut it. These students face the double challenge of having to succeed in college-level courses that may rely on work that they aren’t ready for.

The solutions don’t seem to difficult – counseling, cohorts, etc. But they do require resources.
*One last thing to note: my wife taught English at a PA state university and had students from one of these low-income cohorts. The papers they turned in, while often slightly sub-par in grammar, etc., were generally heads and tails above the other students in terms of a sort of wisdom of life experience. Far from vacuous and cloistered, these students represented a form of striving that seemed invaluable.

These are exactly the sorts of voices that we need at the university level, and we should be giving them any support necessary to see them succeed academically.