My last post dealt with student loan debt and the controversy around forgiveness of student loan debt. Before writing that post, I knew it wouldn’t necessarily be popular and may invite some strong reactions from some.

The spirit of the site is critical thinking of financial and social topics for which I readily invite debate. I received a response that was long enough that I felt it warranted a post in itself. Since the author of the comment knows me personally, I have edited out personal references to keep with the anonymity of this blog which I feel is worth preserving, especially given the current, increasingly illiberal climate, which encourages public shaming and safe spaces as opposed to the exchange of opinions and ideas with respect for individual beliefs.

I readily reveal my blog writing to those who know me on a personal basis but almost never on a professional level for the simple reason that I deal with a large number of institutional parties which I would not like to hinder my opinions or have to censor myself should there be any conflict of interest.

With that in mind, I have done my best to preserve the argument in the response to the post, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t, to respect the time and dedication that this reader took to respond.

You can find more material like this on the site http://MestizaNoire.com.

The Response

The disclaimer on your blog advises your readers to do their “own research and due diligence” before using any of the information on your blog to make their own financial decisions. Perhaps you should also do your own due diligence before making commentaries about higher education and earning potentials — before you extrapolate that increased earning potentials are inherent privileges that must be addressed by the repayment of inflated student loan debt.

It is clear that you did not research the landscape of higher education and the inherent disparities in these institutions that you should consider before making blanket claims based on YOUR earning potential. The Pew Research is an impartial think tank, but do remember who exactly is overrepresented in the best colleges that get people the highest earning jobs. Averaging student debt without paying attention to race and class is a very curious choice you’ve made in this post. If you were to entertain the idea of showing us graphs that account for race and class, I assure you those numbers in terms of earning potential and average debt would be far more inflated than you would like to give it credit.

Remove yourself from the numbers and really think of this critically because this post comes off like a very narrow understanding of the issues within higher education. In the same way welfare and affirmative action aims to equalize the disparities brought upon from years of racialized institutional policies that kept resources away from people of color, the rhetoric around student loan forgiveness is another attempt to dismantle social inequalities. And yes it is actually a social issue, and not personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is all your problems you mentioned in this post: child support, mortgage, and divorce. These are consequences of actions/decisions YOU’VE made. Wanting a quality education so you can compete in a market that VALUES quality education is a false choice that a lot of people with backgrounds like mine are stuck with if we want to uplift our families.

There is no doubt that education improves people’s lives, makes our economy more efficient, and contributes to a more equitable society (Ma, Pender & Welch, 2016, p. 8). Precollege preparation, however, varies greatly along the lines of race and class. In fact, studies have shown that racial inequality in K-12 education, compounded with low social mobility (especially for POCs) in the United States, produce enormous differences in educational and potential income outcomes.

Here is the racial breakdown missing from your post:

Whites are twice as likely as African Americans, and three times as likely as Hispanics to complete a BA or higher (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.7). Between 1995 and 2009, 82 percent of new white freshmen enrollments were at 468 of the most selective four-year colleges, as opposed to 13 percent for Hispanics and 9 percent for African Americans (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.7). To illustrate this point, a New York Times article published in August 2017 states that despite the decades of affirmative action policies, black students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities today than they were 35 years ago (Ashkenas, Park, & Pearce, 2017).

Why Does it Matter?

The 468 most selective four-year colleges (where whites are disproportionately enrolled) have greater financial resources and higher completion rates. Studies on college access have shown that 30 percent of the most talented African American and Hispanic students are enrolled in community college, compared to 22 percent of white students (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.13). Moreover, the data on completion rates show that 82 percent of all students attending the nation’s 468 most selective colleges achieve a bachelors; compared to a mere 49 percent completion rate of students attending open-access two- and four-year colleges (the schools where people like me end up… and guess who becomes more competitive in the job market?).

Investment in instructional spending per student in open-access colleges and 468 of the most selective colleges are $6,000 and $13,400, respectively (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.16). More shockingly, our nation’s top 82 colleges invest $27,900 on instructional spending per student every year (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.16). Whites have claimed a considerable portion of the enrollment growth at 468 of the most selective and well-funded four-year colleges, while African American and Hispanic students have captured most of the enrollment growth at increasingly overcrowded and under-resourced open-access two-and four-year colleges (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.6). However, among high-scoring students who attend college, only 36 percent of Hispanics and 37 percent of African Americans complete a BA or higher, compared to 57 percent of White students (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.27). Then there is the grim reality: during every academic year, 111,000 high-achieving African American and Hispanic students do not have the opportunity to attend college and/or dropout of college; 62,000 of them come from the bottom half of the family income distribution (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.27). Simply put, the data is not just telling us that the best colleges are mostly inaccessible to people of color; the data is displaying the unfortunate reality that even the most talented people of color in the lower SES quartile are not able to access opportunities beyond high school. And when people of color like me beat the odds and get a masters degree, we have people like you telling us that we shouldn’t feel so entitled (or as you say “privileged”) to advocate for help in forgiving our student loans DESPITE of our inherited debt and new financial responsibilities to our families who sustained us during our college years.

Given the current landscape of higher education, many scholars have questioned if the nation’s most selective and resource-intensive colleges have fallen short in being “engines of opportunity”, while successfully evolving into “bastions of privilege” (Pallais & Turner 2006). Dowd et al. has identified that only 3% of college students entering highly selective institutions came from the lowest quartile of economic distribution, while 74% come from the highest SES quartile (Dowd, Cheslock, & Melguizo, 2008). This could also be why your student debt stats are so low, because many wealthy people have college funds or high incomes to mitigate that graph; unlike most first-gens and POCs who inherit debt. Unsurprisingly, students that graduate from the 468 most selective four-year colleges typically earn $18,000 more than graduates of two- and four-year access colleges (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.17).

Based on the enrollment shares of the two lowest quintiles of socio-economic status (SES), NELS 2006 data shows that approximately 7% of transfer students enroll in selective institutions as two-year transfers (Dowd, Cheslock, & Melguizo, 2008). Effectively, fewer than one of every 1,000 students at the nation’s most selective private institutions is a community college transfer (Dowd, Cheslock, & Melguizo, 2008).

There are low-income, high-performing students who can benefit greatly from resources at selective institutions. However, studies suggest that undermatching may be most prevalent in this demographic and being undermatched places high-potential students at a higher risk of academic attrition (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011, p. 319). And IF they do persist despite undermatching their abilities to the college they attend (typically due to financial reasons), low-income students with potential are pigeon-holed into a lower earning potential than they would be able to avail if they attended an Ivy League or selective institution. So I didn’t decide to be in debt, I had a full scholarship through the CUNY Baccalaureate program at Hunter College. However, I did understand the system enough to know that my earning potential will skyrocket considerably in my lifetime if I can get my foot into these “fancy schools” because this is where jobs like yours and jobs like mine recruit their talent. A degree from Hunter College is not the same as a degree from Mount Holyoke or Columbia University, unfortunately. And none of the information you’ve posted here reflects that reality.

In the 1980s and 1990s critics of affirmative action believed that racial minorities “are damaged” by affirmative action and that “minority students are better served by attending open-access colleges that fit their academic profile” (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011, p. 319). However, the data shows that there are enormous benefits for high-scoring African Americans and Hispanics who attend one of the 468 most selective colleges because they are twice as likely to graduate than students with the same academic ability in open-access two- and four-year colleges (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013, p.27).

As the competition between students vying for the limited seats in the most selective colleges, there has also been an increase among colleges to attract the best students due to the benefits of enrolling high-achieving students (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011, p. 319). What is troubling about the current admissions landscape is that affluence of an institution is determined by the prestige of the student body, meaning that the “best students” graduating from the best colleges come from families that have the means to donate the most money. These dynamics compounded with the demands of the college ranking system (U.S. News & World Report), which highly values pre-collegiate characteristics of their students, results in a “competition” skewed in favor of wealthier applicants (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011, p. 319). The most prestigious firms and elite graduate schools in the market reproduce themselves by recruiting almost exclusively from selective institutions (Bastedo & Jaquette, 2011, p. 319). Just saying.

Works Cited

Ashkenas, J., Park, H., & Pearce, A. (2017, August 24). Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago. Retrieved October 19, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html

Bastedo, M. N., & Jaquette, O. (2011). Running in Place: Low-Income Students and the Dynamics of Higher Education Stratification. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33(3), 318–339. doi: 10.3102/0162373711406718

Bowen, W. G., Kurzweil, M. A., & Tobin, E. M. (2005). Equity and excellence in higher education. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.

Brint, S. (2003). Few Remaining Dreams: Community Colleges since 1985. American Academy of Political and Social Science, 16–37.

Carnevale, A., & Strohl, J. (2013). Seperate & Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege. Georgetown Pubic Policy Institute.

Dowd, A. C., Cheslock, J. J., & Melguizo, T. (2008). Transfer Access from Community Colleges and the Distribution of Elite Higher Education. The Journal of Higher Education,79 (4), 442-472. doi:10.1353/jhe.0.0010

Kosmacher, J. (n.d.). Exploring Transfer: Encouraging Four-Year Degrees for 30 Years. Retrieved from https://vq.vassar.edu/issues/2015/03/vassar-today/exploring-transfer.html.

Ma, J., Pender, M., & Welch, M. (2016). Education Pays 2016. College Board.

Pallais, A., & Turner, S. (2006). Opportunities for Low-Income Students at Top Colleges and Universities: Policy Initiatives and the Distribution of Students. National Tax Journal,59 (2), 357-386. doi:10.17310/ntj.2006.2.08

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