Writing at mindingthecampus.com, George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy delves into the so-called “rich kid problem” at elite colleges and universities. It’s worth the read.
We call some schools “elite” but that’s not because students learn more than they would at one of our many non-elite institutions. Often, students (no matter their family background) make more academic progress at schools that offer more faculty involvement to compensate for their lack of fame.
And it emphatically is not the case that poor kids “don’t have a chance” unless they get to attend one of the big-name colleges. America is full of people who graduated from non-prestige colleges, or never graduated at all, such as David Karp, the entrepreneur behind Tumblr.
Furthermore, students from relatively poor families often have a hard time on campuses in big cities where costs are high (even if tuition is heavily discounted) and the distractions are numerous. That’s one of the key points in the recent book Paying for the Party,which I reviewed here.
If schools like Harvard decide to devote some of their accumulated wealth to identifying excellent students from poorer families and letting them attend at little or no cost, that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that getting to go to Harvard means the difference between a life of penury and a life of riches. People can succeed without having a degree from a prestige college and some will succeed better without one.
