Last spring, we lost out on five or six bids for houses in Fancytown, New Jersey. We wanted Fancytown because there were a lot of over educated types there, like us, and a highly regarded school system. Problem is that every New York City expat also wanted to live in that town and we couldn’t afford the house of the crazy old man who had a thing for Elvis.
Instead, we moved to Bighair, New Jersey. Bighair is up and coming, but it’s not there yet. My block is especially blue collar. My neighbor, Linda, hollers out her window, “Dylan stop biting your bruddah!” And the men leave in their PSEG and constructive trucks every morning.
Steve and I have worried that our kids will be very different from their classmates and that they won’t have the same opportunities as the kids in Fancytown. We worried that Bighair High School wouldn’t funnel our kids into the most prestigious colleges. Russell Arben Fox posted his concerns about his daughter’s education recently.
Gregg Easterbrook just made me feel a little better. InWho Needs Harvard?, Easterbrook writes,
Today almost everyone seems to assume that the critical moment in young people’s lives is finding out which colleges have accepted them. Winning admission to an elite school is imagined to be a golden passport to success; for bright students, failing to do so is seen as a major life setback. As a result, the fixation on getting into a super-selective college or university has never been greater.
But Easterbrook says that this fixation with the Ivies is misplaced. Studies have shown that kids who were accepted at the Ivies, but went to the next tier of schools (including SUNY-Binghamton, Kenyon, Oberlin, and several other of my favorite schools) did equally well. All the hasty pudding clubs and celebrity humor clubs of the Ivies did not buy their alums any greater financial success.
Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income “varied little, no matter which type of college they attended.” In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success.
Read the whole thing.
Apt. 11d 
Keep something else in mind, too: When I was applying to college (way back in the mid-70s), from my working-class high school/town, my parents pointed out that, if I wanted to try to go to the Ivies I could, but that the kids with whom I’d be in school would mostly be rich kids, heading off to ski for the weekend and so on, and they couldn’t afford to fund me doing that. I ended up at Oberlin, at which I felt at home within, oh, 30 seconds. And I think my parents’ advice may still hold true all these years later. The other thing about Grandehairville is that, while your kids won’t have all the advantages of fancy-pants schools, they also won’t have the same backbiting and pressure–something else I’ve appreciated more the older I get.
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I agree with Carla. It seems simplistic, but it remains true: the costs (financial and psychological) of attempting to leap over the deepest of class divides often outweigh the benefits. What’s the point of trying to push your kid into a world-class institution if the unspoken rules and habits of that world-class institution depend upon possessing a world-class income, world-class connections, and world-class work and vacation experiences? Sure, a lot of people make it–but many more wash out.
It’s debatable how far down the ladder this argument can extend. Ultimately class and race–both the reality and the stereotypes (big hair and all)–come into play here in predictable but still painful ways. Every upper-middle class parent who stresses about Chicago and Stanford should realize that they don’t offer much (except to an exceptionally elite and lucky few) that can’t be had at far less cost at numerous second tier institutions. Can we urge the same realization upon ordinary middle-class parents, and get them to invest themselves in improving local state schools? That’s a much harder question. Egalitarianism is a principle regularly defended on high, but when the rubber meets the road it’s rarely the children of Ivy grads who actually have to deal with what it means to support their Big Hair neighbor’s education.
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There are two things at work here, though: Laura’s post could be read as the ‘fear of falling’ anxiety, that a blue collar environment might result in her children, despite parental guidance, failing to flourish in the way they might if surrounded by more similar peers. Studying students who have the smarts to be accepted by the Ivy league and then the self-confidence to reject it doesn’t address this anxiety, as it doesn’t say anything about the environment these students grew up in (my guess is that they’re more likely to live in Fancytown). The whole root of upper-middle class anxiety, and what drives places like Fancytown, is the realisation that their children will have to overcome educational ‘barriers to entry’ just to remain in place in the social hierarchy. This is particularly the case for ‘first generation’ professionals with blue-collar parents.
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I am a FGP with B-CPs, and I most certainly did not grow up in a Fancytown; less than half of my high school graduating class went to any kind of college, and many went to community college or relatively local teachers’ colleges (they were still around then). RAFox’s point about the unspoken rules and habits is quite true. I’ve discussed this with others of my ilk–FGPs–and have found that the minus is that, even years and successes later, there are still unspoken rules and habits and experiences that the elites take for granted and that I/we never will (and that we can’t always see/discern). The plus is that we have a lot of experience crossing boundaries–for example, explaining graduate work to working-class neighbors/friends/relatives of my parents–that serves in many, many venues. The other downside is the lack of connections, but i don’t think attending fancypants schools can fix that; the connections have to be country-club and parents-know-them, I think. I doubt that Laura’s kids will fail to flourish simply because of the blue-collar environment, and I think it’s even possible that they will flourish more than they would in Fancypants environment, but, of course, that’s my bias.
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Attending a college like Oberlin probably costs about the same nowadays as education at the Ivies. One advantage of some of the Ivies is that they can give a ton of financial aid to people. So once you’re in, they’ll likely find a way to make it work for you (they give financial aid for families with earnings above $100K, I’m pretty sure, which is not exactly lower-middle class income category). Of course, it’s the getting in that requires a lot of resources in the first place (which probably explains why the Ivies don’t always exhaust all the financial aid they could give).
Another point that may be worth considering in this discussion is whether it is correct to view success and positive/preferred outcome solely in financial terms.
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It’s true that the Oberlins of the world aren’t cheap, but they do have lots of financial aid. the other thing I liked about it when I was there (admittedly 25 years ago) was that they made a conscious effort to mix up the class element, too. My first roommate was from a tiny town in the plains (her parents lost their farm while we were in school); other friends’ parents came from a variety of backgrounds. In retrospect I see how many of the kids there were themselves the kids of FGPs. Another thing, though: Oberlin is miles from nobody’s nowhere, so there wasn’t much opportunity for a lot of conspicuous consumption. I’m sure that some people had fab spring breaks or whatever.
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First, I meant no slur against by bighaired neighbors by pointing out the fact that they have big hair. They are all good people and my kids adore their kids. Our blue collar town has been very good for my kids, and they are thriving in this environment. I’ll have a longer post about this at some other time.
Second, I am worried that my kids are going to be different. Kids who are different get beat up. I’m not really worried about them slipping out of the professional class. There’s nothing wrong with a construction job. But I do want my kids to have the freedom to choose what direction they want to go. I want them to have some door shut to them because they weren’t in the right network.
All this discuss of FGPs is facinating. I’m second generation, but most of my cousins are blue collar.
Oberlin may cost the same as an Ivy, but lots of schools in that second tier are state schools, like SUNY Binghamton. They cost a fraction of the Ivies and have a far greater number of students who were the first generation to attend college. And none of the pesky legacy students to deal with.
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I went to high school in a starting-to-be-nouveau-riche-but-still-pretty-hickish suburb of Nashville, TN. While both of my parents are college grads (and my dad’s a physics professor), the valedictorians of all 10 classes that had graduated from my high school before I did went to Auburn or UT. So I was certainly not in any of the usual networks for the ivies. I started off at Boston University (because they had a good music school and plenty of other stuff that I could do if I changed my mind about violin performance as a major). I ended up transferring to Harvard, and I honestly think I only got in because I *wasn’t* your standard little Preppytown High graduate. I think if your kids are smart and interesting (as they assuredly will be!) that being from Bighairville may well be an advantage in the sight of current admissions counselors, who so like to think of themselves as valuing diversities of all sorts.
Besides, I still wish I’d gone to Oberlin or Haverford (where two of my siblings ended up thriving)or a smallish state school. I was often lonely and lost at Harvard, and never quite figured out how to play the games that *really* convey the advantages of that famous Ivy League network. I suspect I’m not in the minority; I’d guess there are plenty of Ivy grads who end up living much the same lives as they would have without the Ivy degree, but with a vague sort of discontent that results from spending 4 years being told that they are the chosen ones.
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Kristine, you’ve discovered Laura! Or have you been reading her all along? Anyway, glad to see you here. Stick around; Laura’s blog is as good as they come.
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Russell, I’ve been reading awhile (probably since you first linked from your blog). I’m not very smart, but I am clever enough to follow the smart people around and enjoy listening in on their fun discussions 🙂
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I was accepted to Harvard and Princeton. I couldn’t afford to go to either of them, but I was accepted to them. I probably would have gotten a better education at either of them, but would I have been more motivated to do stuff? Who knows…But I more than likely would have majored in a different field had I gone to either of them.
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