To reach the Ivy League after growing up poor seems like hitting the jackpot. Students get a world-class education from schools that promise to meet full financial needs without making them take out loans. But the reality of a full ride isn’t always what they had dreamed it would be.
Here at Columbia University, money pressures lead many to cut corners on textbook purchases and skip city excursions routine for affluent classmates. Some borrow thousands of dollars a year to pay bills. Some feel obliged to send money home occasionally to help their families. Others spend less on university meal plans, slipping extra food into their backpacks when they leave a dining hall and hunting for free grub through a Facebook network called CU Meal Share…
Am I getting deja vu or does it feel like this story comes up every year?
Even if it does, I’m glad it does. It should be stickied on the financial aid forum for when people complain about the poor kids. Yes, they’re very fortunate but it’s not a magical ticket and it happens to very, very few students (which makes the experience all the more isolating).
A young lower-middle-class woman on full FA at an Ivy told me how shocked she was when all her suite mates took advantage of a short break in classes to… go skiing in Switzerland!!
As a student in a really unique financial situation in Boston, this really hits home. In high school, this was my experience exactly going to a prep school. Back then, it was even less than college, but there was a serious social effect in college.
Luckily, it turned around in college due to circumstances mostly not in my control - it really feels like “seeing how the other half lives”. Of course, you can go without (and knowing this makes me feel guilty to indulge in even the simpler things sometimes), but it makes a huge difference in the experience.
The worst part I think is that there isn’t much to do about it, and in the end, change is better focused elsewhere, even in the college world alone. But knowing that there’s other more important issues shouldn’t belittle the experience. I agree with @romanigypsyeyes - find a way to stick this somewhere relevant, just as a reminder.
I have issues with this piece, which seems like one of those typical stories that tries to turn a few anecdotes into a trend.
I certainly think that meals during breaks and even one trip home for the holidays are costs that a “full ride” should cover for students in impoverished circumstances, and it seems from the story that colleges have come around on the food aspect at least. But I can’t summon up too much concern for students at Columbia who can’t afford Starbucks or Broadway shows. I couldn’t afford expensive extras like those when I attended grad school in Manhattan either, and I was solidly middle class. Vast numbers of New Yorkers can’t afford those indulgences either. And, as noted, there’s no place in the world with more free ways to entertain oneself than New York City. As for not being able to afford new textbooks, isn’t it standard advice here on CC to buy used or rent? Regarding having to work a part-time job while in college, well, I did that, too, as did my kids, as do many kids from all kinds of backgrounds.
I think working part time while forgoing Starbucks and Broadway shows is part of the college experience for many students. I was more concerned about the student who posted awhile ago about not being able to sleep well this winter at his college because he couldn’t afford a blanket. Although even then I was thinking that there were blankets available somewhere within student housing but that student seemed too unassertive to track one down. Not having food available during breaks is a real problem. Some scholarship athletes from poor families also have problems getting enough food.
Perhaps the issue is that wealth is the norm at many of the highly selective private schools, where half of the students attend without financial aid (i.e. from top 2-3% income/wealth families), and most of the rest are from families in the upper half of the income/wealth range. If the norm for social activity at such a school involves expensive activities, the students who do not have the money for them may be left out socially.
I know some people who managed to get their children into the Beverly Hills high schools, which are strongly supported by the donations of the very wealthy who send their children there. Said people ran into the issue that their own children really didn’t fit in with the others - they couldn’t afford the expensive fashion that the children of the very wealthy could, they couldn’t afford the social activities or vacations that the children of the very wealthy could, etc. That made it so that socially, they were pretty marginalized, and that pretty much wiped out any of that vaunted “networking with the wealthy” advantage that people care a lot about. Said people weren’t even poor (they were worth a couple million but not tens or hundreds of millions like the parents of the other children), so being poor in the same scenario would be worse.
Education and knowledge are hardly unique to top tier schools (we have books and good teachers all over the country and the world), and I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that a lot of the perceived advantage of those top schools is the networking/prestige effect. Turns out that the wealthy primarily prefer to network with the wealthy, so most people have a hard time breaking into that system in any meaningful way. The rest are generally socially marginalized, barring unusual circumstances of some form.
While there are rich kids at every school, I don’t know of any colleges where the “norm” for social activity is to engage in expensive activities, and I find it hard to believe they exist. Both my kids have attended selective private schools and neither felt excluded from social life because they had to watch their wallets. My S, having attended a public high school with a very mixed demographic, was taken aback by the designer duds worn by some of the students and the expensive clubbing some indulged in on the weekends at his private urban college. But he shrugged it off and socialized with students–and there was no shortage of them–who led far more modest lifestyles. The idea that most students at selective private schools are tossing money around wildly is just silly. And accepting that you have to pass on some activities because you can’t afford them is an important life lesson that will come in handy throughout adulthood.
It depends on what support structure they have. The local wealthy could perhaps be considered to be one social circle, and one that happens to have a lot of the best “networking” power by virtue of everyone having powerful parents who can make things happen. Some groups (e.g. Jewish immigrants) are very good at creating alternative social structures that provide a similar network of support, both socially and in terms of opportunities to thrive. Those who are decidedly uncommon (for example, try being a recent immigrant outside of the immigrant hubs like NYC and LA, perhaps in a place like Oklahoma) have a tendency to become marginalized and not end up belonging to any of the social groups. Being poor, and being from a specifically selected “diverse” background does that.
Oh, and public high schools are very different from private schools of any variety. Private schools have a tendency to develop something of a monoculture by design. Ivy schools are no exception. Neither are technically-focused private schools like MIT/Stanford for that matter, although their culture is somewhat different.
Schools can do a better job addressing things like the food issues, fees for courses, fees to participate in orientation programs, etc. but there is a piece of this story that is simply about kids coming to terms with income inequality in life. The article really only discusses Columbia, the Ivy located in the city with the most (expensive) distractions. All 17 year old high school seniors have some kind of “awakening” when they step foot on campus their freshman year. Hunger shouldn’t be one, but learning to prioritize and budget are not bad life skills. Students need to be supported so they can take advantage of the education but it is 4 years. I would like to have seen a broader survey in this article - but we all know “Ivy” in the title pulls in readers.
I read a statement last year from Yale that it is not their intent or responsibility to provide “equivalent experiences” for low income students, and I agree.
When is enough enough? FA aid covers the most generous meal plan, yet students take a lesser meal plan and pocket the money to send money home or take excursions into the city and then complain about not getting enough to eat? It takes a real sense of entitlement to feel that beyond tuition, fees, room and board that a college should subsidize Broadway shows and Mom’s rent.
I think it was an Amherst President who addressed this issue about 10 years ago in a magazine piece. It bothered him that his low income students didn’t have the clothes and discretionary money that the others had. He also wanted to find a way to fund their families travel costs for Parents Weekend and graduation, and even provide them appropriate outfits for these occasions.
A lot of these selective colleges emphasize community, and it seems to me that it’s not beneficial for a community to have second-class citizens. That doesn’t mean that everybody should have a college-funded ski trip, but I do think it means that everybody should be able to fully participate in college life, including being able to eat on breaks, and being able to attend campus events.
I think this issue exists to some extent on most campuses, but I think Columbia is not typical, because there is so much off campus that draws students, and that costs money.
When my son was in college, there was a major article in the student newspaper about the problems faced by students who had become homeless – usually because family financial problems made it impossible for them to continue paying their off-campus rent. Some were couch-surfing, moving from one friend’s place to another before they became a nuisance; others were sleeping in cars and showering in the college’s gym facilities. This was at the University of Maryland.
There are worse things than missing a few Broadway shows.
I do think, though, that students who know they will be on a tight budget are better off at schools away from major metropolitan areas. There are fewer expensive forms of recreation out in the sticks, so there are fewer situations where the student with limited funds feels left out.