College is a really expensive and essential resume-building experience nowadays.
Even state schools cost thousands of dollars per year, and private top-flight universities can cost well over $100,000 for a four year degree. This doesn't make it easy for students, especially those who come from lower-income backgrounds.
And, as college costs continue to go up, college looks more and more impossible for students in the lowest income brackets. Finally though, a college in Massachusetts is doing something about it.
According to a May 27, 2007 article in the New York Times, "Elite Colleges Open New Door to Low-Income Youths", Amherst College has welcomed students from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds. Amherst not only covers the full cost of some students education, it also recruiting some low-income students while "taking their socioeconomic background — defined by family income, parents’ education and occupation level — into account when making admissions decisions."
The college also provides:
$400 “start-up grants” for winter coats and sheets and blankets for their dorm rooms, to summer science and math tutoring. At the same time, low-income students are expected to put in at least seven hours a week at $8-an-hour work-study jobs. But they get to use $200 a month in their work-study earnings as spending money to get a haircut, for instance, or go out for pizza with classmates so they don’t feel excluded.
I love this initiative from Amherst for several reasons.
First, they are doing a very good thing. The young man profiled in the NY Times article has had a wonderful experience and benefited tremendously from his chance to attend an elite college.
Secondly, they're not approaching the income-divide in the same "take out a loan and apply for scholarships" approach everyone else has. Amherst is actively problem-solving for the students who don't have a lot of options.
Finally, by opening the college doors to students from all academic backgrounds, Amherst is helping all its students. The fact is that high-cost colleges typically attract a much larger amount of higher-income students. The resulting student body, from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, is not good for the thinking of the students.
When everyone has been raised a similar way, they think similarly. At $48,000/year Amherst, despite their efforts, only 15% of the students come from families making under $45,000 a year. Other expensive colleges are probably much worse.
To me, the most telling example of the dangers of a standardized student body is shown in the opening paragraph of the NY Times article.
The discussion in the States of Poverty seminar here at Amherst College was getting a little theoretical. Then Anthony Abraham Jack, a junior from Miami, asked pointedly, “Has anyone here ever actually seen a food stamp?” To Mr. Jack, unlike many of his classmates, food stamps are not an abstraction.
He was the only one. Think about it. How can a group think effectively and creatively about poverty when they have no experience with it?
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