Friday, February 22, 2013
Classroom Connections
Research Blog #3
During increasing research into my topic, I have found that the idea of "corporatization" has been talked about in class and in our readings which brings up some interesting ideas when thinking about my topic. In Nicolaus Mill's reading The Corporatization of Higher Education, a few things caught my attention. He states that "middle-class families as well as the rich are as a result spending thousands of dollars to hire private college advisors, SAT tutors, and sports coaches". Parents are going to these high extremes to try and get their children into the best colleges and hope for scholarships to help them with the increasingly high tuition. Unfortunately, with schools competing for the highest ratings they use the tactic of rejecting applications to get there. Parents are shelling out all of this money to try and give their children that "edge" and most attempts are not worth it. Furthermore, Mills says, "the students who succeed in getting into our highest-ranked colleges and universities a thus far wealthier than the population as a whole. At elite schools, 74 percent of the student body come from the top quarter of the socioeconomic scale, while just 3 percent come from the bottom". All of the money that parents are spending get their kids into better schools could be used to help pay for the increasing tuition they will be seeing when they get there. That students that are not on the top of the pyramid are the ones that need the financial help to get through college and they need the education to make smart decisions about their options. If parents are willing to spend their money on tutors and advisors, they should be also spending their money on finding someone to give their children the right information about college finances since this is not necessarily easily available for them.
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I don't think the parents and students who need advice on college financing are generally the same as the parents and students who are getting all of the outside tutoring and coaching to court the Ivy League schools. It's not the same demographic.
ReplyDeleteThe issues you rise are interesting. I am challenged to see how they might fit with the project you had described regarding financial literacy -- presumably for students whose parents make less than $100K -- even much less.
It is definitely the case that poor students especially have all but given up on college because they don't know from their parents or from school advisors how to make it work. For some insight into just how poorly prepared for financing college these students are, I suggest you read this article from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html
A lot of middle class kids are in the same boat, and they end up missing out on all of the financial aid and support to which they are entitled.
What you say about the competition among better-off parents, though, is absolutely true. Most have come to recognize that privatization means that we are not in this together -- that it is a dog-eat-dog world and the competition for those few seats at the top schools is very fierce. Privatization has upped the ante and driven people toward self-interest above all. Those who can afford to pay the tutors and coaches do so, and they follow the Tiger Mom strategy of pushing their kids hard, trying to optimize their financial advantage. As the statistics suggest, it is working: the top schools are becoming more and more elite. Not surprisingly, the Tiger Moms are not interested in helping the children of the poor and middle class to get into college. From their perspective, that is their competition after all!
So the children of the elite might belong in your paper, but I think you will have to redefine your topic somewhat. Read that NY Times article about the poor, though -- I think you will see that financial literacy education directed at attending college could really help them. At the very least, you'll see that they need it.
You are falling way behind.....
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