After words interviewed top nonfiction authors and other leaders work. Even sometimes surprising read, i really grateful and happy to be talking about this book with you. One of the things i like about the book, you spent time with students and their families and we know today students are so different from the students who used to attend college, into calling them real college students. Im curious about your take on students today based on the reporting. I think the demographics are different, the age are different, i mostly focused on students who were right out of high school, and the experience i wanted to focus on is what the changes soon as out of high school into the workforce. That does not capture all of the college population, but i wanted to understand how the pathways to verged after high school for different students. In most of the ways i found were by Family Income students had a lot of Family Income were going down traditional pass is students without Family Income had many more obstacles. Can you start by telling us of getting into the issues, a little of your own path . I had a rocky. So i started right after high school a group in canada and after finishing high school in toronto i came to Columbia University and survived for one semester. [laughter] and then dropped out and then bicycled around the Southern United States for a few months and ended up a half year later at the university in montreal and have been there for three semesters and dropped out again and did an internship at harpers magazine and started my journalism crew. And when i left and did that i thought i might go back to college but i ended up i was never a fan of the College Experience and i felt what i was getting out of journalism is what i was looking for an exciting intellectual conversation. I tried to figure out if i stay and i did. I can tell in this book its not like you had a traditional path where everything came up rosie in your wine is not happening for other folks. Part of the reason you went through a lot of different places and you talk about a wide variety of students, they may all be out of high school with their all not cut from the same class. How did you decide as you embarked on the project, you went through a Broad Spectrum of colleges, how did you decide where to go . I looked all over, i would to 21 different states and talk to hundreds of students. The point of that was to try to get the lay of the land and understand and hear from a lot of different students, i feel like that would inform me. But at the same time i was looking for a number of students who i wanted to follow over time and eventually i found a few characters that i really connected with, one in North Carolina, one in new york and in d. C. And together the representatives felt like together i can tell a portrait of what it was like for a broader number of students. Retrying to make sure that you are spending time at the top 70 versus the other 4000 plus colleges and universities . One of the things about the way that a ended up at the university i started with students in high school, some i met were in high school and there were a few including the two main characters in my book who were lowincome students and i was not surprised that the ended up at the institutions but it wouldve been interested in their path to matter where they ended up. Those institutions, i ended up at the university of texas in a few institutions in austin and that was happenstance but it turned out to be an institution that interested me so i kept coming back to over the course. The great public school. So lets dig into a few of the students, some i think a lot of people will find shannon in particular to be a heartbreaker and a fairytale. How did you meet her . We met through program called leadership enterprise for diverse america which is a remarkable Scholarship Program the select 100 lowincome students in junior year from across the country, all super high achieving academically in the summer after junior year on the princeton camp, its every Week Summer Program that is the high achieving college a boot camp. [laughter] and move into most of whom who are at a lowincome school among a few super high achieving students or they are one of the few students of color in a high academic track and more diverse type school. But in either case is they dont have a lot of students like them and then they get to be surrounded by young people like them and they love it. So thats where i met shannon. She becomes the opening character of the book and i know from having to choose among students who youve got to know really well, that decision is a big decision. Its a content decision. What is it about her story . You think they will start waiting their way into this and the person i want to meet shannon . I have to confess as a writer, i wrote to completely different drafts from the first chapter. Now when i look at the first chapter who took me four years of failure to realize that. But i feel there was two reasons that is not making sense as initial character print one is, i happened to be with her on this really moment to stay in her College Experience where she was finding different institutions and gutfeld a great stroke of luck. But i feel like more than any other student who i met was at the beginning a real true believer in the idea of Higher Education for social mobility in the idea that select college omissions was real where her hard work would earn her real consideration. So gutfeld like the right place to start. She was at a point to figure out whether she bought felt the or not. To think shes unusual in approaching College Admission with a general belief that it is about your talent and hard work. I think she is. Shes unusual enough and i think we as a nation still half high ideals that how they work but maybe its more so a among young people. Including in people that they feel its a game and so they think of it if they can figure the rules and figure out how to play. One thing i was struck by, you introduced ned who in some sense teaches people to be cynical, teaches people how to play the game and that would suggest, even among those who were raised relatively wealthy, that there is some real, reason to believe that is it measuring your intelligence in the offices are making adjustment but you as a human. I think a cement johnson is is in washington, d. C. Who runs his own company and charges 400 an hour for his tutoring service and bills more hours at anybody else than his company. He is very good and successful. And i think its an interesting question, the actual students who come to him do have a sense of Higher Education omissions and they have already been thinking about extracurricular activity since middle school and going to college tours. I think they are wise to that side of it but what he picks up on is a still think about the sat and act as a measure and i think thats because in their communities and in college omissions its given so much weight and they walk into his office believing that this number will not only determine the future but determine who they are and their sense of selfworth and value to the family and to school and is that pressure he feels. You right that when you help someone do better by 100 points, one of the things fascinating you quantic enter quantitativ. This could change your life, i appreciate the way and whether he tried to wrestle and whether it would change your life. You actually wrestle with the researchers. Tell me about the effort to make heads or tails of what we actually know in the flame of going to a more selective college. Among economists, there is an ongoing debate of whether the institution makes a difference, theres a paper from the researchers, and it says it does not matter that much prethe debate is an actual data debate in ways of use using what numbers correctly and also a religious debate among americans in general and especially parents who despite their competitiveness, dont want to believe that it matters as much as it does. And i dont think some prints want to believe because they fear the kids will not get in to the schools and they care about their kids and others want to believe it doesnt matter so much because we want to believe this advantage that the students are getting is not really something that matters and just to forgive us luxury. So the competing study that takes on the paper that the institutions increase your life by billions of dollars more and also spend much more money and so where i come down, i think it does for any individual student i still think its not a lifeanddeath decision. I think what we tell our students, theres a right school for you and that is still true. But i think the fact that these institutions on average have different effect on the earnings of the their graduate especially given the fact that the student bodies of those institutions are number graphically so different. I found interesting the part that gets so much attention is the effective test scores and getting in and less Attention Span on with the school consents. The School Spending matters in the fact that we had close disparities on what kind of money who has an endowment, who doesnt. Its a little of the attention. And theyve only grown. And it shows not that long ago the different between the institutions and how much they were spending was 4000 4000 10 and also 250,000. And in so many ways of American Society that those affluent institutions and individuals have pulled away from everyone else to be dated community. This is happened because of intense decisions that are not publicly debated not a matter of Public Policy for example, the states need to be funded public higher head while the wealthier institution shield themselves with the endowment. And the open publics in the Community Colleges which do not get as much attention. And they claim they dont even have adequate support to educated student. I think youre right, its their individual decision because we have public and private position. Some of the decisions are being made by politicians and not bias. We have cut the student funding on public art education, the number i see is by 16 by students since 2001. So thats a huge and devastating effect on public Higher Education, at the same time a small number of super affluent individuals are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to a small number of institution of Higher Education and those individual decisions by the wealthy individuals are making a huge difference. It is dark to say the least. One of the people who you talk about, kiki goes to one of his schools to explain that princeton receives more taxpayers than in new Jersey Community college which is probably the reverse of what most people would imagine. The results are fairly intense. As a nonprofit, we dont even have to pay taxes on its land although it has voluntarily done so. Most people would think that not being added new Jersey Community college would find life extremely easy and you do not find that. Talk to me about what you saw happening. It was really complicated and i did my best to try to understand, i think mostly it was her freshman year and i was talking to her and sat with her and canvas. So she is a lowincome African Americans student and lived a chaotic upbringing but spent the last three years of her k12 education of high school at affluent Public Institution in charlotte, North Carolina. But she was fantastic, she left her school at the preparation, which she got to princeton, academically her first paper she got to see and got nothing but as after words. I think a lot of us are hesita hesitant, a young student without a lot of money to place like that can struggle academically, not true for her. But she was struck even had a lot of experiences in her life of being a lowincome person into height income people and lots of white people. She was so struck by how she was socially weird and how concentrated that privilege was. In one of the things that struck her among the africanamerican students, she would find her community and feel more of a connection with them but their backgrounds were different than hers in were likely to be from private school then where she was from generational poverty in the United States. I think all that was confusing her and made her feel like she did not belong and made her anxious. I feel like she is an interesting case because i feel at the same time when she got to princeton, academically intellectually, she loves philosophy and this is what i was meant to be doing. So i think thats why her freshman year was so complicated for her. On the one hand she raped at the place shed been looking for her whole life and all the other it was difficult for her to feel at home. I appreciate so many different parts including you dissected the black is not black is not black. And what that means, especially around her family to be very intense. I think a lot of people probably exhume for her being as lowincome she was she was taken care of financially. I noted that you said something that very few of us have said out loud which is that she was not just trying to finance herself when she was in college, she was sending money home to her family and always wondered if he could say more about what you saw, that issue is so silent, it feels like its not allowed, useful to have an expected family contribution and not the family except your contribution. So that was true of taking her family to new jersey about an hour away. And so she suddenly had enough money for the first time in her life. She was not rolling in money into like to survive and get a cheeseburger when she wanted to. And her family was still struggling financially and so she felt pressure within herself and from her family with her aid to them a few times. And i said, i feel like its a subject, those of us who are not from the situation can often be really judgmental about that and judgmental towards her family and feel that the terrible thing that her mom would do to expect that money from her. And i absolutely understand her point of view in her moms point of view, i mention it but i felt uncomfortable dwelling on it too much. I think theres ways that people who would read my book would be more judgmental then certainly she was. It was one of the hardest things for me too write about. Its one of the things that weighs on her while shes there and you have to wonder, wouldnt that have been away to help them, i dont know. It seems something that you mentioned. It seems like, you said it was doing the more impressive job of keeping the students on on track for success for any other institution in the kind of place where they would know more that that was happening with her students in a social psychological approach to education. And they recognize students basic needs. I was struck that you noted that every student with breakfast and lunch everyday and the set a time when close to wanted to. What do you think it is about this place that makes them attend to the students basic needs and see the whole person. And did they see any of that princeton . The college is a twoyear institution in chicago thats associated with the university which is a fouryear catholic private institution that enrolls highscoring, high income white students. Their admission is different, it enrolls lack in latino Chicago Public school of graduates, lowincome, and the highscoring ect. That has very low College Outcomes who dont graduate for two years, colleges of any impressive rates at all. When i say i thought they were doing the more impressive job of any other institution is not that the Graduation Rate is skyhigh, but they were working with student population for whom there was no. The approach they took was a student at jesuit priest from Higher Education folks. You know a lot of the basic call estate under call juscolleges. But when you know students like ones enrolling that they will struggle. So there is so much going on in the lives of the students not academically but financially and working jobs and family trouble, Food Insecurity and that he needs to be to thinking about all those different points. Why he does it, i think it goes to the model, its a religious duty for him which means its a little interrupted as Higher Education as a whole but i thins him and where he gets his concept of what a college should be in canby but i dont think its a necessary part. I think that culture and karen culture existed within institution as well. A desperate ive seen it, ive seen in the panhandle of texas and amarillo college. It is so striking me that you are right that the language was intrusive and not as though the student at princeton who dont have people who are leaning into their lives, it is their parents and the parents higher who helicopter over them but when the school does it, they might say that the parents are involved and they dont know how to be or the resources with the princeton part. I wonder, does it change their ability to get the education. The students ability that she wants so badly, if someone is able to leaning more or care, do you think she wouldve gotten even more from a . I think, kristen has and spends a lot more money and counselors and advisors and mentors and therapist and like you can get every kind of help you need and kiki was aware of that. But its not intrusive in the same way and not caring and thats the way that they perceived it. She perceived that its there and im grateful for and it can be there if i need it but she did not have the same feeling that someone is looking after me and someone really cares about me. And i think on an emotional level that makes a huge difference. Theres another writer that has a book out, and he lived this as well. And going off to an elite school where they see the care and you come to understand what is in is not in the domain of what you been given and at what point did you discover his work on this journey, and what played a role in your thinking . In the sociologist at harvard, i met him and went to the second conference and it was a harvard so he was speaking at the conference and i interviewed him at the same time and got to know him so what i was writing about, the chapter in which i read about, i mean narrative, and the research gave me a superstructure to understand the experience of select institutions. It is so powerful to have somebody who is studying and i did appreciate the way in which he danced and to keep his institution quite you do go for it in terms of a number of arguments that people make and one of the ones that is so rip it right now, an idea that we know college is not for everyone and we know its going to be okay because of walters. So i thought we should talk a little bit about welders in the idea of working with your hands pays off, we really should not worry so much about opening access to college. What did we learn as we dug into that claim . I feel like the complication of the welding argument is that theres two arguments at the same time. A genuine neighbor economic in which is accompanied story, others are very partisan argument and they have overlapped as politics and media in a way that makes it difficult to untangle and in a way that makes it difficult for people to judge. Because all these questions of identity in respect have been tied up in how we just make economic analyses of what professions can earn what kind of money. Period kin. And then there was a lot of roderick. 200,000 year 300,000 a year and some were making that much many and in reality it is possible but many when they judge that value are that opportunity but they dont talk about the highest earners they dont say you should be an earner that we have a tendency to do that to hear that anecdote and in reality if you look at data is that the median range cracks and that 93 percent welders make less. And that is a median outcome 90 percent of welders make less which is fine generally more than the minimum wage going to a Community College that is well supported that is a great pathway if thats the work that you want to do but all these political arguments are filled with exaggerations that make it difficult for people trying to get degrees and to go into building so it is difficult but they need us to help them make that decision. They actually managed to disappear and they say you can be wealthy without college but then they ignore Community College but on the other hand its for the Community College so do you have any thoughts why we dont publicly understand the Community College quick. I feel you know more about this than i do so there is something about the word Community College we give a lot of negative connotation and if we talk about where students learn from welding they talk about Technical College was generally means Community College but it has an image to be something unpalatable and in fact it is this beautiful american idea of a institution your community that could do one of two things. And one is to provide high quality job training whether thats nursing or emt or being a welder and the other is providing a Good Foundation at low expense for a fouryear degree. But for what they can do on a regular basis and Everything Else saddles those institutions with the job of taking care of students have not been given other opportunities and doing it with very little resources to cut their budget. I recall it wasnt one of the young people right out of high school the intersex but that they played a role in his life and allowing him to move in and out so then you found your way through . You mean the student studying welding . He was in North Carolina and yes there are these three students who are at different intersections with twoyear institutions that are strictly Community Colleges but they were, none of them loved school none of them are dying to be in a classroom but they found getting out of high School Without anything extra then today were trapped in a certain type of lowwage type of work and unstable Weather Service work or manual labor. Working in factories. It just felt like they wanted another alternative so that took them to a few different institutions and this particular man studied welding. He had never been a School Person there is a lot that he really loved he was earning a lot about welding. But financially it was so difficult for him to make ends meet to go to college and the support that he needed just to get through the courses that he is still trying to make its way through that degree. That something. We also heard in your story you are able to understand this so i want to speak about moving toward solutions and especially you talk a lot about inequality and how unhappy people are and you say that when they think about the problems of higher ed they think not with universities but the Education System at large but with the students to be uninformed about their promising opportunities and so say lets just show them the numbers of what you can earn and what did you learn about the validity of that . Its very confusing at the best of times with the best of resources. Students who are in communities not a lot of history and not a lot of resources, when i would visit the schools in senior year talking with students about college plans, i did dad in rural texas, they were very confused about what the right options could be in they felt this responsibility of what every adult was saying to come up with an answer. But they felt they were just grasping at something they heard of and it just struck me what a bad job we are doing , all of us to provide them with useful information and support to make those decisions. Part of it is just good advice and emotional support part of it that the options are often not that great and so for some of those counselors to figure out the right pathway is difficult for those three students that i mentioned it was hard to decide on a path even though it wasnt a great path for them. But for them to say but we are experts we can send them information and advice maybe there is a sixdollar solution. Really that idea has sees higher ed capturing the public imagination that we can send them information and dont have to put more counselors into high schools or do any personal work with them. What did you find . Is there a solution out there . So what youre talking about targeted specifically to super high achieving low income students and this was done several years ago where they send the information packets to those who were selected based on their income and their test scores. And early on there was indication that these information packets to say you could go to a more selective institution and you can get Financial Aid made a difference but if that was replicated by the College Board they found negligible impact. So the problem the way it was done is it didnt give us a chance to figure out why. One thing that is so puzzling is that inflation should make a difference and again its not low achieving students they were high achieving students. So the fact that so many are continuing to go to institute one institutions that could have more resources is puzzling that that experiment hasnt answered what is missing. And with more knowledge and from it getting from the peer review publications but i had to ask myself, does it have something to do like a change of the motivation you said today they are motivated less by health and more by fear. Are there other things that trump the information that is going on in their communities or their families and yes i know i could go to the school and the price is lower but thats not real for my life. Is that a possibility . I do. And the way the data has not been analyzed we dont know. One of the things that is often forgot about with that experiment is most of the students found to be following the income typical path rather than go to super exclusive institutions they go to local Community Colleges. That most of those were white and disproportionate were white and rural. So a lot of my reporting in this very white and rural part of North Carolina. So certainly there is a lot going on in those communities that has to do with family and culture and history and even politics that i think affects the decisions though students are making. But a broad generalization i cannot support with data but it struck me being in urban communities with black and latino parents did not have a lot of resources that our kids should go to college and that it was a good thing even if they didnt have much information. In the rural white communitie communities, its the opposite. The families were much more opposed going out of state or going away or the county and that affected a lot of the students who just had internalized it and so in this country we have a habit of thinking low income as students of color especially in the red states for those who just are not interested in going into institutions. I did have to say that people who are not economists have written that lot about why that is. So has returned to marias work she writes about the feeling of threat a Real Community will feel that they are leaving and what does that actually do if they think there dont come bac back . And similarly there is a book that talks about the resentment of the situation and i couldnt help but notice that Real Community they look at university of University Madison to take the kids away once they are gone they are gone. So i do think we have to broaden areas of action that part of that is that set of political and economic dynamics. You are right. And also comes down to conversations around family and also with fathers and mothers and grandparents and that is hard to think about in terms of Public Policy. Is that the right policy to get them out of those communities are not . And i feel that is where i think we have trouble there is trouble thinking that it is such a dynamic of what is going on in those communities and have trouble thinking rationally about those issues have trouble thinking about solutions. And to see the options there are 18 counties of pennsylvania we talk about philadelphia they dont have a single college. So talking about Online College but also Broadband Access what would happen if there was a nearby to your college that would grant a bachelors degree he could get that entertainment or do that they need to leave of the things that you can do when you go off in the world that could never be achieved because the talent really must go away. That really is an interesting point and that is valuable. But to me than the complicated political point is then why are the voters defunding their higher Public Education and this is the question i kept asking. And it would be a great investment for his community so people like him could get good training and better and thats true for all pennsylvania but these are the ones that are cutting their funding so it does feel like having that local college could be a solution that they have to go away type of problem and the politics make it a paradox. Definitely. Although i cant imagine the ones doing the cutting are the actual legislators. There are people behind them but they have a lot of ire about the fouryear schools two years get lost they have no money to pay for the lobbyist but that would make a great book of what has happened. Im overgeneralizing but i think that is the case that people are most likely to vote for those legislatures. So i want to ask a little bi bit. This is not your first book but you are very pointed in your critique there are many sacred cows which i appreciated. But your other book how children succeed it is a different book in my view and that this seems to focus on systemic problems and the grit over a child is that an evolution of your thinking . I think it is. I feel how you succeed was a few Different Things so that book for me when i look at that from a few different ways from the point of view at the university of chicago the point of view of educators but the research i found most important was the medical biological Developmental Research growing up in a traumatic environment can have on young people and Early Childhood programs can counteract those and i felt i was trying to look at the structural approach of what was happening in those communities but maybe looking at Young Children through the lens of Young Children and also looking at interventions that i was most drawn to intervening with specific children like pre k to change the situation around. And when i started working on this book, i thought i may follow that same model with specific interventions with specific students given that intervention or that support so thats a good example of that i was struck how much more in Higher Education the problems were so systematic so that is probably an evolution in my own thinking and partly a difference in the system. So in the final chapter its one of my favorites you turn to the original g. I. Bill one reason i am enamored is because my grandfather is one of those at 92 he still talks about the importance of that legislation and thats why i do what i do i point to that because he talks about the transformative power of that bill and then talk about our own research and how that paid off. Tell me what you learned. Im so glad that you captured. So i talked to a few veterans of world war ii and then grown up in massachusetts and from ireland and a son of a factory worker went to fight in world war ii and then came back and heard about the g. I. Bill and went to northeastern to change his life and his familys life and the life of a lot of people in the country during that era. What struck me and reading the research is the history of how the g. I. Bill was written and now i think we look back that everybody agrees on that there were two ways first of all when it was written in 1840, it was thought nobody would really take the government up on it at the time college was very exclusive Institution Just for rich kids only 10 Percent High School graduates would go to college. And the gis were sons of farmers and factory workers so the idea they would want to go to college seemed crazy but yet they did in huge numbers but then also right before the end of world war ii there was the thought if they all did show up it would be a disaster the president of the university of chicago talked about hobo jungle love uneducated workingclass kids but then the student and graduate population doubled. But they also succeeded and they turned out to be great students. So to me that is the most instructive part of the story for me because we are in another moment of doubting that we could expand Higher Education for those who seem unlikely to ask succeed in college with the preconceived notion of what College Looks Like so we dont think we have the need to support those students. And what the g. I. Bill showed is when the country decides to support them in a robust way they succeed. We now have a place by place evidence the way we invest in any given institution that they do succeed. But as a whole b have given up on that idea of expansion. You also note we expanded high school. With their always amazed that to think that we just cannot expand education or afford to but we cannot afford not to but what is your take . What wouldve happened . Yes we would not have dominated the 20th century in the way that we did. I didnt know about this until working on this book in 1910 in 1940 United States drastically expanded the number of high schools and percentage of students graduating from 10 percent up at 50 percent in 30 years what was so striking is that it was mostly, it makes sense but now in a way that seems odd in retrospect that Communities Just look at the science like they were just watching what the employers needed they noticed technology was changing the farms and factories and that to get the jobs that they needed the young people needed more than a sixth or eighth grade education. So they had a very sensible reaction lets get them this education and collectively. Lets build free public high schools in every community in the United States. And focus sending everyone on the community. So that collective notion it just made sense to people now we are in a similar situation. That was 100 years ago we thought he needed 12 grade to deal the technology of the twenties and now its 100 years advanced and we are still debating whether a 12th grade education is enough. Obviously it is not and all the signs but now unlike our predecessors who could respond to the basic Economic Science to say lets educate our young people, we are fighting about it turning into questions of identity and politics and partisanship when the young people need our support and need her help and need more skills to survive in the current economy. One century ago we heard the science and responded in a collective fashion. Now we hear and responding in the irrational and selfless fashion. There is a big election next year what does that mean for opportunity . Thats a great question. Its hard to tell it is striking some of the democratic campaigns talk about fairly radical ideas about changing Higher Education. Personally i dont think the specific proposals they have made are quite there yet. I think they have a consumer mentality where they eliminate debt but by contrast with the g. I. Bill it was lets invest in the students but the other was also lets level the Playing Field and invest in students who are not currently going to college. So my hope is progressive candidates would understand those two principles would make more sense and from a democratic point of view to create a bigger higher public Education System but at least some candidates have that conversation seems like it is promising. Thank you so much im so glad you went to the territory with this book. Thank you good afternoon. Director of partnership here at the Research Council and it is my very great privilege to introduce todays lecture and coauthors of the book why meadow died. As a reminder in the audience we will be taking questions the last 15 or 20 minutes and will
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