Sarah goldrickrab discusses her book, paying the price on the rising cost of Higher Education. Good afternoon, sara, how are you today . Im good. Thank you for having me here. I loved your book, so chockful of important data and very complex data about the implications of Financial Aid and income in being able graduate college. It was so readable. Can i have a quote. This book is intended to be a wakeup call. It brings the lives of students pursuing College Degrees front and center and unveils their financial struggles. Ensuring that the American Public has a clear sense of how and why Financial Aid is failing to get students to graduation and this will help us find effective some issues. What drove you to do this study . Well, this particular study really came out of a longstanding set of research of mine why some people finish college and other people dont. Ive been interested in that question for much of my career. And one of the things that experts have said matters for how students do in college is money. But at the same time, whenever theyve examined the effects of Financial Aid program they dont find much. For some reasons, the Financial Aid, when pressuring statistics, they dont look to be that large. And in 2008 i was approached by a set of philanthropists who said were going to do something incredibly generous and were going to give out money to students across wisconsin and we hope it will help them finish college and i really wondered, will that work . Will it . Because there have been all of these other studies that kind of indicate, its a drop in the bucket and will it make the difference that they hope . A lot of books will take a snapshot. This is the entry cohort and this is the graduating cohort and they dont look at what happens in between. You did something very different. Talk about the longitudal nature of the study. In order to say how the program worked, i really felt like the experience of getting this program and getting Financial Aid is an evolving experience, right . The price that you say for the first year of college is not the same price you pay for the second year of college and frankly, regular people know that. So it doesnt take experts to tell them that. So that meant what we did, we followed the same group of students over the next six years, to see how their lives changed and the extent to which their need for resources and the way they use those resources and how this program affected those resources, how that shifted. And we got to see dynamics unfold, that i do think that are commonly missed. I think you got to see nuances and thats something that gets missed when youre just doing snapshots and snapshots because you lose all the in betweens. Most people when they talk about the cost of college, think of tuition and fees. Thats what they think of. Your book elaborates on what the true cost of college is. Can you tell me a little about what it is and the audience about what it really takes to go through college and what it truly costs . Well, yeah, its far more tuition, and frankly, the federal government knows that. What it costs in the list of the institution, includes things like getting a roof over your head and food to eat and transportation. Again, the conversation keeps coming back to tuition and fees. Thats unfortunate because tuition and fees are less than half and sometimes maybe only 30 of the total cost of attending college. The real hangups that students have are the need to pay their rent, to pay their utilities torques to buy food. They cant do the same things when theyre in college because they need to spend time in the classrooms. It was those things that tripped them up over time, it wasnt the tuition and fees. Thats when, for example, they ended up taking out a loan. It wasnt to pay for the tuition, it was to pay the cost of living while going to school. I think those are the kinds of things that people fail to appreciate sometimes. I work in a very large public urban university, City University of new york system, and its not uncommon for me to speak to students and have students who truly worry about things like can i pay my metro card, which in fact enables them to get to work, to school, back home . Versus can i eat lunch this week . Theyre not just hanging out, having fun. And your talk a little about some of the narratives. What you did, you distilled them into some student individual experiences and can you talk a little about that in terms of what the students were struggling with on a daily basis . Sure, well, there are 3000 students in the overall study. The book focuses on six of them just to try to help the reader understand what this looks like up close and that was really one of my paths. These students have gone through enormous challenges and i want the reader to really see them. So consider someone like chloe. Chloe was a young woman who grew up on a farm, you know, in rural wisconsin and had a horse and thought, you it would be really cool when im older to be able to take care of animals which i think is pretty normal ambition. She went off to a twoyear college so she could do that. Well, so many people think that Community College is free in this country. Chloe was one of those who quickly figured out that that was not true. So, she had very little money, her family was assessed by the federal government to be able to pay only a couple thousand a year for college, but even after all her grants came due, she was facing a bill of over 10,000 a year. And she was asking herself, how am i supposed to do that . And by the way, just because the government says my mom can contribute that 2,000, she cant. Theyre wrong. So, chloe sold her horse to go to college. That was the starting point. To me that was such a poignant example of the extremes that students will go to because they want that education. She really did want it and i dont think that shes an anomaly. I think that sometimes what happens is grandma sells something or the cousins pitch in something. Families go to Great Lengths to make College Possible for students these days. Even with that money, she wasnt okay. She wanted to avoid Student Loans because her mother was struggling with Credit Card Debt and chloe was afraid of that circumstance. Instead she took on know the one job, but two jobs. The reason she couldnt get enough hours from a single employer. So she worked at kohls, which is a Department Store in wisconsin and she also worked at petsmart which made sense for what she was trying to do in school and found herself doing two jobs and doing what so many tell her to do, take five classes at a time to get done quickly. Two jobs and five classes do not add up. She was commuting back and forth running all over the place and falling asleep in class and again, she knew she was exerting too much energy and she wasnt doing enough studying. By the time she said, okay, this isnt going to work for me and i needed other money and applied for a student loan. Well, Student Loans dont just come through immediately. Right. It took more than a month for the loan money to arrive, and that point her grades were so bad she had been placed on academic probation and these days chloe is no longer in college. She has debt and no degree. And thats whats so worries me about students. We talk about the american dream, and you talk a little about it being broken for a group of students. But a student like chloe comes in, shes working two jobs, shes doing the best she can, shes trying to contribute at home. And theres also so much shame involved in going to a faculty member or a teacher and saying, im struggling, what can i do . And ive seen students fall off cliffs before when its maybe in october, they started to try to find some help or lifeline that could move through the system, but it over whems them so quickly and then when we think about what is out there, you get minimum wage jobs, if you dont dont have a College Degree and as you know from the book, chloe joined the navy, and that was another astounding thing. Talk a little about what our preconceived notion is of the College Experience and how chloes lens was different. Yeah, when i went to go see her after she had dropped out and frankly, i had to fly to florida from wisconsin to meet her anddy that because in so many cases when a student drops out of college, thats the last time we see them. I wanted to sit down with her and see whats going on. What was clear, she was having trouble finding work that would pay and that being in the navy, for her, created a sense of structure and gave her a sense that she could at least get, if she put three squares meals a day and a roof over her head while she was trying to pursue her career. That doesnt mean she doesnt want to be in college, but she knew that the College Experience she had didnt seem to care, the school didnt seem to care she was falling short in other areas. So i think when we talk about, you know, 18yearolds, and thats what she was, wanting all of this freedom and to go off and have nobody tell them what to do, i dont think that theyre actually asking to be completely cut loose and shoved off a cliff and saddled with an Economic Situation that puts them at such risk. Were telling them to go to school and saddle them in this way that it really does feel like a betrayal and thats why ive put that in the title. Weve broken their trust. I think thats something that strikes a chord with me all the time, because a lot of public universities are also unresourced or inequitably resourced. If you go to a more elite school, the ratio of advisors to students is much better than with 7, 800 students and the students have a myriad of problems. Can i ask you just a little d diegregs. I went to a situation where my mother was an adjunct and for some reason, those were the good old days and that meant i got free tuition at that institution. Pretty amazing. Which is amazing, and thats a big discount. My parents didnt have a lot of college savings. But two incomes we didnt qualify for aid. Lets be honest. We didnt qualify for aid and i decided i would just work. I was lucky enough working at a restaurant allowed me to pocket enough tips, and i was decent enough as a waitress, that i could make ends meet by working 40 hours a week and sometimes i was cocktailing and other times, burgers and pancakes, do you want syrup with that . But i was able to do that. The prices and the cost of living today are so much higher and the minimum wage is so sad and frankly, the tip minimum wage has even gone down partly because you put tips on a credit card so you have to pay taxes, and these things no longer add up. While i worked in college and you may have, too. Yeah. Thats not going to be the sustainable story here. And i think thats an important point to make cause so many people say i worked through, with no problem. But the world is not the same. The cost of rising education, costs of tuition. Now, were reasonably priced tuition and even many of our students struggle, but at a lot of other public, the taxes on tuitions so the tuitions look more like private tuitions and what you talked about first was that first year tuition, so the Financial Aid package comes in and you go, great. What happens the second year, typically . So many schools are giving students extra grant aid for the first year of college to get them to come to the school and the family finds out in the second year, that grants not available. And tuition went up. And so, over time, the college basically becomes more expensive with each year that you stay, and students are really taken aback by that and thats one thing that folks need to know going in, what youre given is that First Year College price tag is not going to be what you pay in that fourth year. One of the other misconceptions youve debunked it the fact that the perception is out there, that students, theyre spending their Financial Aid dollars on fancy restaurants, going to bars, any kind of luxury that you can imagine and so therefore, theyre not really spending it where its meant to be. And i want to read a quote because it struck me, the quote on about buying black pants, which is something that you and i and you have young children, i have grown children, and Everybody Knows they need an interview suit, they need, you know, so i just wanted to quote this and have you expound a little on it. The quote is, i dont spend it on luxury items, i dont buy stuff that i just want, i actually never really have unless theres a need for it. Three weeks ago, i went and got myself some nice black pants, which you need for College Business for interviews, et cetera. Its my only pair of black pants and i got a nice button up shirt because you need to look nice for interviews. Other than that, its just dues for the sorority or stuff. I try not to go out and buy food too much. I do buy applesauce and milk, just breakfast items. I have some snack items, hot chocolate. No other, thats it. I can get by without buying luxury items. Hot chocolate was a luxury item for this young woman. I know, people with few resources, who the recipients are have learned for a long time how to manage scarce resources and dont throw things away. There are so many things that are said about college students, and said at elite private institutions where they have the luxury of going to the art museum or having a party or a wonderful spring break, the vast majority of undergraduates dont do anything of those things and the data for the other folks have nothing to do with them. They dont line up. We do not see students spending in frivolous ways and their time on. Two things are notable to me, one thing never asked about about undergraduates, do you spend time studying. Never ask do you spend time caring for other people. Exactly. We saw lots of people making that time investment. Working for other people. And the other thing we saw far from being out partying and drinking with the money. Past past it is an official term remarkably presumptuous. The number that it reaches, first it doesnt take into account one of the most important things in a famous financial resources, dared that. And my subsided family can contribute but is completely ignoring the debt the family possesses been able to do so. In addition, lots of people are working in high schools these days to help families pay when they got to college, even if its just down the street that they spent time at college, the family loses that income. That is how we can sometimes reach what is referred to as a negative family contribution. The problem is no negative numbers are allowed in the federal in. They truncate the number to zero and say we dont have to contribute anything, but they dont say with a money back to the family, which is in fact what they do with those resources. Its really a pretend figure. As so many people say it doesnt seem to matter very much with college completion. Well, that is because it is inaccurate and measurement error when i was a big deal. This is the number plate with measurement error. And that is so disturbing because it is a bureaucratic system. Tell me a little bit about that. They say fafsa is easy to fill out and i think you need a phd to fellow asked that quite frankly. Talk about the bureaucratic nature of the whole package when the students begin. It does get the most attention. This thing is a map. But there is a lot of attention for policymakers right now dealing with fafsa appeared unconcerned about what happens after because as students know, after the fafsa you find that youre not get enough money and many find out out all these extra rules. So to actually take your money from year to year, you have to do a bunch of things. Even if you stay at the same school, same School Coming up to keep keep refiling every single year. Thats not an easy thing to do because of all the paperwork involved. Satisfactory academic progress. If we could explain that every Single School has different rules. They have certain grades but they also complete a certain amount of questions. If you go back to your own experience in the school, when a class didnt turn out to be that way you thought it would be and it was too hard or not which you were really looking forward, you dropped it. Frankly if youre trying to get your grades up, he took easier classes, too. These strategies will backfire if youre on Financial Aid. People doing regular things that most people do in college will actually cause them to lose their Financial Aid and not surprisingly they are taken aback. We are so careful to try and tell students that if you drop this course you drop the lower level. If you drop the lower level your financial leg goes away. Sometimes they dont have a choice because do i didnt have or d. When i have a dream to become something in that course wont help. Tell me about how some of your students in longitudinal study dealt with those issues. A dealt with them pretty badly and i dont blame them. Even as a faculty member that students know i know some of the stuff in this cosponsor they bring their cases. They Say Something like my dad got sick and i missed in School Assignments that cost a lot so i think i should drop it. Im aware of the consequences and so we weigh them. I cant help navigate this. These things dont make sense. You should feel to drop a class if you need to. So we saw stephen who literally dropped below fulltime status and all of a sudden parttime pay top about fulltime pay. The whole formula for distributing money is off base there. What usually did it cost them over time to move slower through college. That is the last thing you want to see. The more it costs. If we want students to go faster, we cant tell them to go faster. They would love to go faster. We dont set up the conditions under which they can go faster. That is to give them the support. I work at Temple University now and one of our programs assigned thing that in my study we actually found really works. Pay students not to work. Student need money so if they can get the grants instead of through working, then they can take more classes and work life and they are less distracted and they can spend more time in school. It is very different than workstudy. This is an effort to help students finish in four years instead of five years by taking more classes. Work study is really Popular Program and by saying that because so few programs are actually popular. Work study is the idea we can provide you with work on your campus and the federal government actually provides the resources to pay for that. So many people think apollo Group Recipient will get workstudy and it will be okay. And my study i describe the trends over time and the utilization of workstudy money available to poker recipient. Today less than one in 10 cal grant recipients nationwide to attend College University is allocated to any workstudy funding and the macs they usually can learn its 2000. Its hardly a solution unless we revise the program to create more resources for the people deemed eligible and really pays. I think that is one of the real challenges. The other thing is one of the people in your book talks about how 2400 was part of the formula but the person was never able to get the job which means money goes away but that doesnt mean that cost goes away. They call it magic money or mysterious money or fake money. Says that you have a but the next step is going and getting the job. Lots of places dont provide you with any information on how to do that. One young woman we met it to the ball. She went to forever 21 and said that want to work here. They said sorry we dont take that. But first well all smiled a little bit. But its not funny. She wasnt given information and by the time she figured things out there were no workstudy positions left. This is a very broken program that really could be fixed and should be fixed. Is a very interesting and very often University Save a lot of money on the table. He talked about disparity across the system in terms of how workstudy and monies are allocated. Can you talk about this because i have to say that surprised because i assumed the schools would get the most low income students and that didnt seem to be the case. One of the basic premise of educational funding at least in theory if the money should follow the needs. If you have more students who are low income in the school should be getting more resources from the state so it can help those students graduate. In wisconsin is strongly suspect its true elsewhere. While on average the state appropriations, many in the support given to institutions in the state legislature what has declined over time on a per student aces, it is not declined at the same rate or the same way for other institutions. In wisconsin we are very segregated by income and Race Ethnicity and the city of milwaukee is for the concentration of people of color are. Home to one of the most troubled School Systems and get you to touche and they are, the Public Sector get far less resources than the touche and then the rest of the state to serve better off students. In fact, i point out uw milwaukee which has many, many pell grant recipients and lots of students of color get less money than which their students to get wonderful High School Education and has every advantage in front of them. They are very Different Institutions very Different Institution and it doesnt necessarily make economic sense to underresourced schools educating the students who frankly will be lost in todays economy if they dont get to see. The price per student in our study with 19 higher than it was for students and the rest of the state yet they were lower income. And they try to make ends meet. They try to make ends meet in a struggling city that lost its Manufacturing Base and struggling with concentrated poverty, violence, the Failing School system but yet has all of these hardworking young people they are who got the message that an education as a way to a better life than they are just trying to do school and they are paying such a steep price. One of the things he talked about in your book was the fact that students tend to stay close to home with low incomes are not going to pick himself up and go to california. The issue of living at home, being viewed is much less expensive than having Financial Aid changes the function of kenny talk about that because most of my students at city college have won 600 bed Residence Hall. They are at a subway from grasslands to get where they are. Its not necessarily easier for them. The know what not and yet the popular recommendation. When you think is going to happen when they live at home . The Financial Aid system assumes they wont get lower prices. In fact, its actually legal for a school to assume the student doesnt pay a dime for rent, food, corporate transportation. Most will get the money for transportation and assume that they do have that expand. But lots of them assume that mom and dad take care of everything. This is incorrect. Again its very presumptuous. American families today across the board are struggling with the middle class and making ends meet together by sharing resources. The longstanding strategy and i think its a lovely tradition. Its a family thing to do. Well, that means the student may very well be contributing to the rent. They may even be paying the rent. They may even be living there with a Family Member to take it possible for them to have a roof over their head in utilizing Financial Aid money to make that happen. But the school is tapping the amount of help by assuming that they dont need anything. Its a real tragedy in so many ways because the other thing i have seen is that it puts an enormous Mental Health stress. But on the whole family situation that they want them to get a degree as i dont know what like in milwaukee. They dont have some kind of credential. Oregon decent paying jobs. At the same time they were helping make ends meet. Can you talk about in particular he was out drinking and doing this and i happened is that the collegeage students and a lot of it is related to stress, related to figuring out how to fit in and what their preconceived notions are. Mental health is such a national issue. Can you talk about it from the lowincome students perspective . This is one thing and prodded about the study as we consider the possibility that there was the effect beyond just the pocket book. I agree with you. We known nationally as an issue and when we turned to look at it, there were tremendous numbers already depressed as they entered college. They did not improve. The young man whose name is tyler in the book. Tyler wanted to play football in school and people quickly found out that was not going to happen. He had a medical issue after the first year and like a lot of young men he didnt cope very well. He was stressed out about that in the money wasnt coming together and the also really wanted to party. That is important to share tyler story because there are some people out there not making perhaps the best decision, that they are common decisions in the sense of what young people do that sort of time period. He turned to alcohol to hide what was really going on with him. He talked about the pain he was having that he lived in his fathers basement to create a bedroom for him because he couldnt make it to you. He kept on crashing his car and getting put into jail overnight or whatever. He said i wish i could stop this nonsense that have more Financial Aid, hang onto that money. The world had gone upside down for him and it is for a lot of people. Families are struggling with the fact that they invest in the strategy that helps their children become economically secure by making College Possible for them. And when things dont work out as planned and they are frequently not working out these days, it bears not only for the student but also the parents, even if younger sibling who then go what is going to happen to me now . I thought this would work with joy when often got nothing but debt. Why would i go to college . We are going to be paying up for a really long time. The other thing that struck me is how many students turn to the forprofit sector to try to get a degree which is they are incredibly expensive. I have a hard time understanding what are the fact theres that may make them turn from the public which is expensive to the forprofit that they can help now. In many ways we are pushing them there. Underfunding the Community Colleges in particular and not giving them resources to do outreach to students that necessarily to provide all the courses attended a student need them leave the student to get them. They make them feel wanted and they offer them what they called aid, which is really just loans. They bring them in. Or even federal policies out there like welfare reform that limit the number of things that count as an education and those things are mainly delivered by the forprofit sector. We are pushing people into debt by driving them to a sector that spends very little money on instruction and a whole lot of money on advertising and recruitment. Theres a book coming out soon called lower ad that lays this out and i think this is such an part of the story and its part of why dealing with funding the Public Sector could do so much good for this country. Not only because the Public Sector would be more affordable, but because we could see some people being diverted for the forprofit set or were they so frequently and up with a worthless credential and death. That is so worrisome. The public there, they struggle. It is a struggle to get a worldclass education which i know we do to students on a daily basis, given Everything Else that goes on. The other plays you dont mention explicitly in your book, that the use of distance that. Lets go online. There is a real place for online education. I wonder in low income students who have a computer can you talk a little bit about that . Thats clearly a place where people say maybe thats can help. Im sure part of it can happen. The we talk about making good policy is by understanding the problem in matching the policy solution to the problem. Distance education is mismatch of this problem. Online education is a great solution for me because ive been again about taking additional courses in economics. I have a phd. I know how to learn and i could easily do it online. Sounds really good. But the students in the coming of situations where theyve had very bad educational experiences , and they need a teacher to release it teacher to really sit with them tailor the instructions and also in an interpersonal way get to know them. How is the teacher going to note that a student isnt eating or doesnt have a roof over their head if they never see them . We have growing numbers of them in college today. Supposed to go online to do their coursework. Why would we be pushing this at a time when more and more students who have the greatest need are demographics. Where would we push a solution that is so mismatched question or i firmly believe theres an important place for distance online education. But that is one of the things i think about because very frequently students will talk to me about having not even a quiet place to study for a quiet place where they can run their computer or if theres a computer is a single computer for the whole family there is a lot of need there. Sometimes its a computer lab on campus and they look great, but the lines are so long. Anybody whos tried to get studying done with lots and lots of students there, that is not the right way. Thats an interesting issue. He also touched upon that insecurity. As a 2011 study from the cuny system or 40 of the students reported being food insecure, meaning they were sure where or when their next meal was coming. We talk about the importance of lunch programs in k12 because you cant concentrate if youre hungry and havent eaten in a couple days. We talked about getting applesauce and snacks with high sugar. A little bit of a sugar high, but its not the protein rich healthful food. The k12 where the popular dory about how being in college we are on a ramen diet. Its getting in the way. We tell ourselves by the way the couch surfing is pretty normal. Maybe asleep on the couch or the other. These are stereotypes getting to be frankly doing harm because what is actually happening right now is we are having students whose resources are insufficient and they are ending up not only on a ramen diet on a daytoday basis the suntimes about in the upcoming at all. This should not be surprising. We have growing poverty rate is off the chart and not getting much better. Poverty doesnt disappear. But disappears the entire social safety net that we have built up around them to be sure we were able to listen able to learn in elementary school, middleschool and high school. When they show up for seventh or eighth grade and we make sure that we offer them at least pizza. They show up at Community College and they are shocked to see that now they are being charged. Its not like they dont get food has value. The rate they say did you think i became wealthy . I didnt. Im continuing my education and i continue to have these financial circumstances. Once again without food. The student in new york city who gets their subway covered with the natural card when they were in high school very often are very concerned for very good reason. It would be so straightforward to expand National School lunch into Higher Education so that we can make sure that hunger doesnt get in the way of diplomas. What youre talking about about in our Community College, part of the program which has been an amazing success for guiding students through Community Colleges in a very, very short period of time compared to what happens without it. It is in advising insuring that the students getting them through Developmental Education quickly rather than having them back. These models and am very proud because cuny has done wonderful things with these models. How do we get those National Models to the Greater Community . Its hard because it not a matter of learning. About having the money to do them. The Program Costs money. It pays off but it costs money. I really want to say i think the hard part about the program is so important and i know we cant disentangle the effect of that part compared to the whole thing. It condemns these negotiate with local transportation agencies to try to figure out how to start with that. Even if it just means they open a food pantry. Even if it means that creates an emergency housing on the campus that would be so helpful if we start to the practices and policies into place is to these things are happening. Youre not going to be able to solve everything overnight. Nobody does, but right now theres far too many basically assuming because somebody gets Financial Aid they are okay. They are not a pin that is why i said this is a wakeup call. The students know this is the reality. Its time for everyone else in charge to know and start doing something about it. To the students of wisconsin madison fare any better than the students in milwaukee if they look at the same demographic . Yeah, to some extent. Its hard to say that because the student start off with more academic preparation, but also to be honest, even a power recipient tends to come from a little bit of the higher income brackets in the student at the other school. They are to start with different advantages. The other major advantage they have is a far greater resources available. So the counselor ratio, the things that are available to them to ask questions of people is just more widely available and also more widely available because there were fewer student with financial need at madison and milwaukee. At the same time, i want to know sending more students is not to this problem. The select and institutions are select event will never take everyone. We need to build support for ordinary americans will continue to go to college and we need to make sure that those places with lots of privilege to begin with including those who get to keep out the wind from people that they dont hog all of the money. This is an important thing. We have a very inequitable system of Higher Education financing that goes well beyond both are currently talking about. Its a very interesting to find that you have because when youre in this crowded schools, i have seen some of the schools. 26,000 students running seven days a week all hours of the day and night. It is just hard to get enough staff and administration to be able to serve the number of students eliminates the students have. He saw that in milwaukee as well. Tom a little bit about the Technical University versus milwaukee and how does students choose one versus the other . First let me Say Something about the resource issue because a lot of people are concerned if we create policies that help my people go into the Public Sector, and this is going to be bad because they will have a low quality experience. They will be crowded and kind of like what happened when cooney open its doors and wasnt quite ready for us. We dont need to repeat that mistake and were not going to. Theyre going to be more resources at the table to expand capacity of the public that it has shown over and over that it can serve students well in giving resources to do so. So thats essential. The question is a lot like a Community College. They have a bifurcated system in wisconsin of two types of twoyear colleges. A lot of times it happens to students in terms of choosing between the university of wisconsin milwaukee in the Milwaukee Area Technical College was a matter of price. The university of wisconsin milwaukee is the most expensive Public Institution in the state because it gets the least resources from the state. Its not like the technical colleges that much less 6 cents a bad when you are someone who has a thousand dollar has a huge difference. They are little differentiated in terms of and a lot of folks who werent ever sure they would be college material, but theyre recognizing the economic imperative and looking for a Second Chance and not offer such wonderful opportunities. It is great to see at the same time some of those students, some of them are one step from living on the street. Some of them sleeping in their cars. Reaching into their own pocket to pay for things for student. That doesnt happen as often. When that is happening on such a frequent basis, that is a policy issue. Weve got to do whatever it takes to make that stop. Ive seen that at city college, too. It is not uncommon for them to help them out if they need a paper in the student doesnt have enough money, they will take it down and they will be available at 2 00 in the morning on a saturday because they are so dedicated to teaching the population on this issue is a generational issue because when we see absolutely. About a Mission Driven the faculty are. We use the word faculty are professor and each institution with the same job everywhere. My colleagues are not doing the same job. I think it comes out more often. This is so important and they partly due because it helps to enhance the relationship between educator just to show them you care. Recently i was thinking i cant take this anymore. Im talking about it. Enough of the talk i have to act that created this new fund called the fast fund. What it is is faculty and students together. The point is i do tribute merchants need to faculty that empowered to give it out as they see fit. They are the frontline workers. Lets be honest, most of them are not making very much money. They are the people region in their pockets. These are not sixfigure faculties. Theyre having trouble feeding their own families and there is something about that untenable to me. I created a nonprofit with a couple of other women and put it on my website because, you know, im writing about it. I look at the students and im trying to shape social policy. I tripped over a woman literally. I almost tripped over a woman and i said graduate student at rutgers homeless. Im getting ready to come here to talk to you and im tripping over a homeless woman whos trying to pursue a phd. Something is so wrong. We have to open our eyes. To me, that is what i loved about this book. It really did go against the tide. The tide of what the normal stereotypes are about low income students and middle income students so they get squeezed in some ways, and other race because they dont have the financial wherewithal to get into the system, but not enough that the students need. To me its all about the student success. How do we get from here to there. Talk to me about the United Nations and he had a very interesting story, which talks about the importance of it truly does take a village to get through. Can you tell me a little bit . One of those folks who made me so hopeful and the reason was because norbert like you said who have been the reservation and 17 it is not an exit that common in the native American Community because few can afford to do it. They provide very generous College Scholarships to the few folks who managed to make it to college. He was very lucky. He was one of the only students we saw to go to a fouryear institution and paid virtually nothing. Almost entirely covered by his scholarship. And back matter. Sometimes he would still run short of funds. Where it also mattered was his mom saying she worked as a hotel maid and hes done times in order to help out. You are not working during your first year of college because you need to get good grades established. He listened to her. Whenever he faced a difficult decision in college he started and he returned to his family is coming to his older brothers, his aunt whos gone to college and check in with them for ricin support and they uniformly stood with him. That turned out to be so important. At the end of the day, im afraid someone will look at him and say thats a student of color and he was lucky because they get all the scholarships. No, nobody gave anything away. He grew up in every situation on the reservation and the people who made that possible was in the federal government. It was the Community Stood together an impressive thing we cannot afford to have students drop out of college at a get there. We together will make this investment and pay for it and it worked. Barber finished college and is gainfully employed. Herbert is going back to the reservation now and be a contributing member of society. That is the power of not just saying well, we are going to leave it up in take our chances. We are all about ourselves. Thats the Current System and it does not work. The that has policy implications. How do we engage i have seen that im sorry and she talks about the first in her tribe to go to college. Her parents were at the graduation. It was the most heartwarming amazing experience because what you see when she got that degree all of a sudden her husbands were attending college. It shifted a generation. Its an individual, how nice. We dont understand the implications of an entire demonstration. There have been scholars have traced the effect that the g. I. Bill and what happened to that generation in the way they otherwise couldnt afford. Is a study of what happens opening its door in the early 1970s. They trapped him for 30 years. They trapped the effects on their children. It lifted them up. We have to stop thinking of college is primarily an individual benefit. It isnt. It is primarily an economist will say you dont know this. We dont know it because we dont collect data on it. You dont ask any dog know what you dont want to ask about. The social benefits are so substantial that we need to shift this funding that direction. These are things we cant afford not to fund. These are benefits that pay off across generation. Who would deny a child the opportunity to go to college . Could you look a child in the United States not for you . Now can you tell them they can when theyre little. When they get bigger you start telling them theyre not cut out for it or we can afford to pay for it for them. We have to double down the same way we did when we made high schools for you. Its hard for a community to imagine what it would look like if people stop their education after elementary school. As we need to. My grandmother when i said to my father, how many great grandmas and another 70 or so. She sent to work in the factories and. My other grandmother was functioning illiterate. Look at what happened. You have college. Instead of for the next. Thats what we need to get to. Tell me what the futures studies are. There is some name in doing this research that i didnt know when i started. There are other programs out there to support lowincome people. They arent nearly as good as they used to be. A lot of students started getting colleges facing difficulty i navigated other bureaucracies. They are working together. If they were from a poor family you would get to college. But they really work on macs is the leading cause by starting to align our system and social policy. We know that immigration policy, housing policies that discourage people from being fulltime college student. In order to get food stamps in college you have to work 20 hours a week. That does not align. How do we bridge these things and how do we create a system where people are better trained where they are trained for the whole student to know something about poverty and case manage. How do we create a system that acknowledges that college is no more to go enough to live in a Residence Hall and going to parties on the weekend experience. It is hard work. Guest so lets do that together. Host well, thank you again so much. Guest k