{"id":16112,"date":"2015-12-08T12:45:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T17:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16112"},"modified":"2015-12-08T16:56:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T21:56:32","slug":"to-what-extent-can-colleges-promote-upward-mobility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16112","title":{"rendered":"to what extent can colleges promote upward mobility?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0expectation is widespread\u00a0that colleges should\u00a0provide pathways\u00a0to prosperity and success for individuals–and also make the distribution of wealth and power in the whole society more fair and equitable. Higher education\u00a0seems to have that potential because it does\u00a0promote upward mobility for individuals. Even if you are born in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, if you attain a college degree, your chances of staying in the bottom fifth are only 1 in 10<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the results at the national scale are\u00a0disappointing. Only a few (14.5%) of children born in the bottom quintile complete a four-year degree. The pressure for higher education to promote economic mobility better comes from various quarters–conservative governors angry<\/a> that college degrees aren’t aligned with employers’ needs, technocratic liberals in the Obama administration trying<\/a> to push down college costs, and campus activists demanding<\/a> that\u00a0student populations be representative of the national population in terms of race and social class.<\/p>\n

The pressure is understandable,\u00a0and much of it is valid, but\u00a0we must squarely face the\u00a0reasons that higher education\u00a0does not promote mobility if we want to improve results.<\/p>\n

College graduates<\/em> represent\u00a0the upper strata of society. About 40% of US adults hold\u00a0college degrees, and they increasingly fill the top 40% of the slots in the whole socioeconomic hierarchy. That is why it is good advice to an individual student to complete college. Four-year colleges intentionally prepare their students to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, business leaders, and teachers, not bus drivers, receptionists, or construction workers. That’s what they offer; that is what they’re for<\/em>. It means that the\u00a0alumni body, almost by definition, will not\u00a0represent the socioeconomic profile of the country.<\/p>\n

The alumni\u00a0could, however, represent the racial and gender diversity of the country if race and class were decoupled. And the alumni could come from economically representative backgrounds. Half of college students could be raised in homes below the median income, even though, as alumni, they would occupy the top 40% of the socioeconomic scale. That would\u00a0imply a great deal of upward mobility, and it’s one criterion of justice (justice as an equal chance to succeed).<\/p>\n

The barriers, however, are serious. One obstacle is that we don’t have an expanding middle class. Adjusted for inflation, the median US family earned<\/a> $54,000 in 2014, about $4,000 less<\/em> than in 1999. If families in the middle are becoming\u00a0worse off, then\u00a0upward mobility for some implies\u00a0downward mobility for others.<\/p>\n

That zero-sum model is an oversimplification, but there really are only so many jobs for lawyers, doctors, engineers, and corporate executives. Families who already stand in the top 40% will fight tooth and nail to keep their own kids in that tier\u00a0instead of trading their spot with someone from further down the hierarchy. They will spend whatever they must\u00a0on housing, k-12 education, and extracurriculars; apply\u00a0whatever pressure they need on\u00a0their alma maters; and\u00a0take full advantage of their social networks to keep their kids ahead of the median. They may value both racial and socieconomic diversity as educational assets, but not to the extent that they are willing to give up a spot at a top college to someone else’s kid. And it is highly implausible that raising their consciousness about injustice will change their behavior. I can think of no comparable outcome\u00a0in human history. People at the bottom of hierarchies do achieve change by obtaining power, but not by making the people at the top feel bad.<\/p>\n

We might think that by investing in human capital, we could expand the middle class and make\u00a0space for more people above a real income of $54,000. To\u00a0some extent, that is both possible and important. But my sense is that left-of-center economists are now criticizing\u00a0the human capital thesis<\/a>. Yes,\u00a0individuals<\/em> who have more valuable skills, more elite\u00a0social networks, and more cultural capital will beat out the competition for desirable jobs, which is why a college degree predicts high earnings. But raising the proportion of people with college degrees–as we have done–does not make the society more equitable, because other factors are increasing inequality. Prime suspects are deregulation, capital mobility, and monopoly\u00a0power.<\/p>\n

Finally, at the individual level, a person must move a long way from the levels of financial, human, social, and cultural capital available at the bottom of the economic hierarchy to reach the levels that are expected for candidates for great jobs. It is implausible that you can move nearly far enough during four years that start at age 18.\u00a0To the extent that higher education is a\u00a0path to upward economic mobility, it is near the last mile of that path. Colleges and universities compete for\u00a0applicants from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds who\u00a0have already<\/em> received unusual support from families, community groups, and k12 schools. Colleges can\u00a0play a useful role by a) being aggressive about finding these applicants, the ones who are ready to move the last mile, and by b) serving such\u00a0students well. But they are not going to get disadvantaged\u00a0kids 80% of the way. They offer too little, too late.<\/p>\n

These are reasons that higher education is unlikely to\u00a0make more than a modest dent in the inequality problem. To address that problem in a serious way, we need different economic policies.\u00a0In a different political-economic climate, colleges and universities could do their jobs (educating students and producing knowledge)\u00a0with less injustice. Given the reality, I believe our top priority is to understand the inequality problem better and to make the knowledge that we produce more politically significant. I don’t mean only economic research and policy advocacy but also normative inquiry, cultural critique, social experimentation, public dialogue, and a range of other\u00a0research-related activities. Meanwhile, we must deal with an unjust context\u00a0as ethically as we can, which means\u00a0handling matters like admissions, hiring, and retention thoughtfully\u00a0\u00a0while\u00a0also acknowledging the inadequacy of these responses to the underlying problem.<\/p>\n

[PS: I read later today that<\/a> “colleges themselves are responsible for about 5 percent of the variation in students’ earnings later in life,” which reinforces my argument here.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0expectation is widespread\u00a0that colleges should\u00a0provide pathways\u00a0to prosperity and success for individuals–and also make the distribution of wealth and power in the whole society more fair and equitable. Higher education\u00a0seems to have that potential because it does\u00a0promote upward mobility for individuals. Even if you are born in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, if you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16112"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16135,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16112\/revisions\/16135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}