Campus Richie Riches Need Archies
Perhaps you have seen USC’s advertisements playfully objecting to the “University of Spoiled Children” moniker that some had given the institution in years past. The ad made me wonder: If the spoiled children aren’t at USC, where are they? They must be going to college somewhere. I decided to find out.
Since there is not a National Registry of Spoiled Children, there is no list to match with college enrollment records. So the question must be approached from the other direction: Which prestigious colleges and universities across the country enroll the fewest “working class” students--regular kids whose parents don’t have fancy degrees or European cars? Wherever those children aren’t would probably point to where the spoiled children are.
Of the nation’s top private universities, the University of Southern California enrolls--by far--the most students from lower-income families. By my measure, 27% of USC’s undergraduates are from roughly the bottom third of all families in terms of income. Princeton has only about 7%; Stanford, about 11%; Caltech in Pasadena, 16%.
UCLA enrolls more poor and working-class students than USC--almost 35%--and more than any other top-ranked university in the country, public or private.
UC Berkeley and UC San Diego are next in the rankings at about 30%, better than other flagship public institutions such as the University of Virginia (9%), the University of Wisconsin (11%) and the universities of Michigan and North Carolina (both about 12%).
If there is a University of Spoiled Children, it’s not in Los Angeles.
This is a good thing, because--call me a romantic--I would like to live in a country where our education system is a route for upward mobility, a way that children of the working class can work hard and become leading scientists, educators or other professionals. If our colleges simply recycle the upper class, further spoiling the spoiled children, then they are not contributing to a healthy, democratic society.
But it is not always easy for working-class students to succeed at elite colleges and universities. Too often they are such a rarity that they have to hide the truth or risk painful silences when they reveal the fact that their parents didn’t go to college or they almost never ate at a restaurant when they were growing up. Just as resources go into helping ensure that other groups of students feel welcome and understood on campus, students from lower-income families need support too. But at most colleges it doesn’t happen.
It can be difficult to get college administrators to thoughtfully include social class along with important issues of race. One reason may be the lack of a yardstick for institutions to compare themselves with one another.
Yet by studying the percentage of domestic students who receive federal Pell grant scholarships--which are awarded using a common formula across institutions--data can be compiled that compare the economic diversity of various colleges. The grants are not just offered to dirt-poor students. They are also given to the children of store clerks, bus drivers, nurses, police officers and small-business owners.
The nation has benefited greatly because colleges and universities have sought to improve the racial diversity of their student bodies.
With the new data that is available, higher-education leaders should do more to ensure that diversity includes students who grew up living in apartment buildings, using laundromats and riding in used cars.
The spoiled children could learn something from them.
