Students and their families and we know that todays College Students are so different from the students that my team is colon to take in the real College Students so im encouraged on your take based on your reporting. You are right the demographics today or do differently age is different i mostly focused on students who were right out of high school so what is that transition out of high school . That captures all of the College Population but i want to understand how the pathways diverged for different students and that was usually by Family Income they were going down a much more traditional path to split out the Family Income. Start by telling us into those different issues about your own path coming out of high school. I had a rocky. After school in toronto i came to Columbia University for one semester and then dropped out and then traveled around the Southern United States and ended up half a year later at yale and was there for three semesters and dropped out again and got the internship at harpers magazine and started my journalism career i thought i might go back to college but i was never a big fan of college i felt like what i got out of journalism was this conversation so i tried to figure out how i could stay. So in this book its not like you can have a traditional path where everything comes up rosie and you wonder why it doesnt happen but part of the reason is you went to a lot of different places and you talk about the wide variety of students who may be right out of high school but not all cut from the same cloth so how did you decide embarking on this project you said you went to a Broad Spectrum but how did you decide where to go i looked all over i went to 21 in different states talk to hundreds of students. I just tried to get the lay of the land to hear from students that would inform me but at the same time i was looking for a number of students and then i found a few characters in a really connected with one in North Carolina a few in dc and together i wouldnt claim they were representatives but i felt like together i could give a portrait. Where you intentionally trying to make sure you are spending time with the top 70 versus the other 4000 colleges and universities . One of the strange things that i ended up at the universities as i started with students at high school they were in high school and there were a few including the two main characters who were super high achieving low income so i was not surprised but i wouldve been interested in their path no matter where they ended up. But i also ended up at the university of texas and a few other institutions in austin that was through happenstance but that turned out to be in it and institute that really interested me so i kept coming back there. Thats a great school so lets dig into a few of the students. I think people will find shannon in particular a heartbreaker and a fairy tale. How did you meet her . We met through a program called leadership enterprise for a diverse america it selects 100 students in junior year all super high achieving academically that brings them together this summer after their junior year on the princeton campus for a seven week program like high achieving College Boot Camp and the students most are from low income schools with a super few high achieving students or sometimes one of the few of color with a high academic track in a more Diverse High School but in either case they often dont have a lot of students like them and then they get to this institute now suddenly they are surrounded by kids just like them and they love it so thats the program i met shannon. And she becomes the opening character of the book. And if you have to choose among students you know really well but that is a big decision it is a content decision so what is it about her story that made you think they will start waiting their way into this and the person i want them to me to shannon. I have to confess i wrote to completely different drafts of the first chapter but it took me four months of failure to realize that so i cant claim it was obvious to me right away but there are two reasons that that initial character that i happen to be with her on this momentous day with her College Experience which was finding out whether she was in or out at certain institutions. That was a great stroke of luck journalistically but i feel like she more than any other student that i met at the beginning was a true believer in the idea of Higher Education with the force of social mobility that it was from her hard work was a real consideration so that felt like the right place to start because what i do in the book is question those perceptions but at that moment she was at the crisis point to figure out if she believed in that or not. Do you think she is unusual to approach College Admissions with a general belief it really is about talent and hard work . I think she is. She is unusual in all sorts of ways. I think i think we as a nation still have high deals how high one Higher Education works maybe more so among young people i feel that a lot of young people feel like its a game end they have to figure out the rules and how to play. Introduced us to another character who sometimes teaches people to be cynical and how to play the game and that would suggest that even among those who are raised relatively wealthy that there is some reason to believe the sat is really measuring your intelligence and that they are actually making a judgment in your as a human. Thats an interesting point so as a tutor in washington dc charges 400 an hour for his tutoring services there is more than anybody else that his company so he is very successful at what he does. Yes it is an interesting question you are posting in the affluent students do already have thinking that it is a game they been thinking about their sports and going on College Tours and they are wise to that side but they still think of the test as a measure of their worth and thats because in their communities and College Admissions it has given so much weight so they walk into his office believing that this number will not only determine for the future but who they are and their value to the family into the school. You right when he helps somebody do better what fascinates me is you quantify that of the people that they pull in front of now all of these americans are behind you and you are racing ahead. I appreciate the way that he tries to wrestle with it really would change your life. But you actually wrestle with the researchers. Tell me about the effort to make heads or tails of what we actually know to go to a more Selective College because you have higher scores pays off. Among economists this is whether they go to a more selective educate one institution makes a difference there was research that says the affluent students it doesnt matter that much so the strangest thing about this debate is the data debate that economists understand but also is a religious debate among those in general and parents that despite their competitiveness dont want us to believe that matters as much as it does because they fear their kids wont get into those schools and we want to believe that they could leapfrog over the students that its not really something that matters but a frivolous luxury good. Survey competing study says it really does matter so those that increase your life term lawn lifetime earnings and also they spend much more money per student. So where i come down on this i think for any individual student i still think its not a lifeanddeath decision. What we tell our students there is the right school for you is still true but i do think the fact that these different institutions have a difference on their graduates especially the student body are demographically so different. So with those test scores and thats what the schools can spend. Part of this is School Spending matters that we have such disparity based on what kind of money they have to have that endowment. And those disparities have grown i dont remember which researcher that said the difference the solutions and how much they were spending between 4,018,000 per student per year now its forth one 41 4250 per student so those most affluent have pulled away from those gated communities. And this is because of those intense decisions that is not a Public Policy to be defending public ad while they could shield themselves with that endowment but the open access public so the Century Foundation claims they dont even have adequate support. It is an individual decision but with that accommodation of public and private some are made by politicians. We have per student funding but the number that i see is by 16 percent from 2001 so that has a huge and devastating effect while at the same time a small number of super affluent individuals donate hundreds of millions of dollars to a very small number of institutions of Higher Education so they are making a huge difference. It is stark to say the least one of the people you talk about is actually featured in the Century Foundation report to ask a witness to explain princeton receives more than the new Jersey Community college is probably the reverse of what people imagine and it is fairly intense so as a nonprofit princeton doesnt even have to pay taxes although it has voluntarily done so but many people think it being at princeton would find life extremely easy but you dont find that so tell me what you did see happening for her. That relationship is very complicated i did try to understand and capture that she is a low income africanamerican student with a chaotic upbringing who spent the last three years k12 Education High School at an affluent public is just one institution in carolina and god preparation for a place like princeton so when she got to princeton academically she did great almost from the very start so the idea that a lot of us have in our heads that a student who comes without a lot of money to a place like that can struggle academically is not true for her. But she was struck even having lots of experience in her life up to that point of being low income and alone high income people thinking low income she was still struck by how culturally and socially weird princeton was and how concentrated that affluence and privilege was. That was even among africanamerican students once she did find her community she found a kinship but their background was different much more likely to be from affluent families, private schools, schools, immigrants, she had generational poverty. That was confusing to her and made her feel like she didnt belong and made her anxious. So in interesting case she felt this is where i was meant to be my whole life academically and intellectually was with highlevel philosophy classes this is what i need to be doing thats why her freshman year was so complicated so then she gets to where she was but then its hard for her to truly feel at home. I appreciate so many different parts of that which black is not black is not black but she was black black but that means around her family so a lot of people assumed to be as low income as she was she was taken care of financially and i noticed very few of us have talked about Higher Education she wasnt just trying to finance herself but also sending money home to her family. So could you say more about what you saw there . Because that is so silent you are expected to have a family contribution not that they are expecting your contribution. So that was true with her family going to new jersey who was one hour away so now suddenly she had enough money for the first time she got to full tuition scholarships she was not rolling in money but she could go out and get a cheeseburger when she wanted. And her family not far away was still struggling financially heavily so. So she felt pressured within herself and from her family to give some of her aid to them and she did a few times. But i did report on that because i feel that those of us who are not in that situation can be judgmental about that or towards her family to feel what a terrible thing mom would do to expect that money from her. I understand the points of view so i mention it but i felt uncomfortable to dwell on that because i do think there some people would be more judgmental that was one of the hardest things for me to write about it feels like it weighs on her while she is there because you have to wonder isnt there a way to help them . I dont know it seems there was another college that you mentioned you said they are doing more impressive job to carry people on track and this is the kind of place where they would know more like that was happening with their students with social psychological approach to education and they recognize students i was struck that you noted they provide breakfast and lunch every day when at a time they were food insecure up to that time that is amazing into those social workers so what is it from this place that they see the whole person did you see that at princeton . Interesting. I hadnt thought of it through that lens and thats a great question. So a twoyear institution in Chicago Associated with loyola which is a selective catholic private institution that is a highscoring high income mostly white students but her but but the mission mostly enrolls black and latino Chicago PublicSchool Graduates almost entirely low income. And mostly not very highscoring on the act so this is a population that has very low College Outcomes so when i said they were doing a more impressive job than any other institution is not that their Graduation Rate maybe is as high as princeton but they were working with the population that had no other good options and yes, the approach that they took was the dean of students father, a jesuit priest was a jesuit model does not attribute here very often so stand back and there are some things to be said for that idea but but for those that are enrolling like a handsoff model so the notion is that there is so much going on in the life of the students not only academically they work jobs, Food Insecurity they need to think about all of those different points so it goes to the jesuit model it is a duty for him maybe its a little harder to replicate but i think that is what inspires him and gets the concept i do think that culture is as well. I have seen that it is not a Jesuit Institution but it still strikes me that you are right the language was intrusive but its not as though the students at princeton dont have people who are leaning into their lives but its their parents and those that they hire who helicopter over them but when the school does it the parents are involved they dont have the resources to be so does it change their ability to get the education . The students ability so she wanted so badly. She is there and she has the talent but if they could lean in more . Which you have got an even more from it . I think its a great question. Princeton spends more money they just have an army of counselors and advisers and mentors and therapist can get every type of help that you need is a princeton student and kiki was aware of that but its not intrusive in the same way i dont mean not caring that the way she perceived it she said its there and im grateful for that it can be there if i need it but she did not have the same student as other schools that somebody really cares about me and on an emotional level that is huge. So you talk about going off to this elite school but then you come to understand in the domain of what you have been given and discovering his work on this journey. He was really influential a sociologist at harvard and i met him three years ago featured in an article in the New York Times with the first generation iv movement he was both speaking at that conference and i got to know him a little bit. So when i was writing about kiki so with that narrative thrust was that experience but that gave me a superstructure to understand to those highly selective institutions. It so powerful to have somebody that is lifted but i really did appreciate that need but you dont pull any punches in this book but you go for it with the number of arguments that people make so what is so rampant right now it will be okay for those who dont go so i thought we should talk about welders in the idea what pays off as the x argument we shouldnt worry so much about access to college what did you learn . I feel like the complication of the welding argument there are two arguments at the same time one is the genuine labor economics argument it is a very partisan political argument and they have overlapped then conservative politics in the conservative media that makes it difficult and in a way it makes it difficult for people to judge because all these questions are identity and how we make simple economics of this analysis of what kind of money so that reality of welding that you need to post secondary training most go to Community College and get a twoyear Associates Degree there are steps you can do after the aa degree some welders that just do shop class usually thats not enough training or there are forprofit or technical colleges that offer shorter colleges courses. You do need some type that then there was a lot of rhetoric in the years that i was reporting welders who were making a ton of money figures of 15200, 300,000 a year for welders and there are some that make that much money and in reality it is possible that most other professions when they judge the value of the profession or the opportunities available they dont talk about the highest earners nobody says you should do this because you can make the same thing. That with welding we have a tendency to do that we keep hitting the anecdote and if you look at the data from the bls the median wage is 41000 a year at the 90th is 63 so 90 percent makes less than 63 which is the Median Income for a household in the United States 90 percent make less than the median Family Income thats fine its a good job it generally pays more than the minimum wage if you go to Community College that is well supported by the public its a great pathway if thats the way you want to go but we have surrounded welding that has been filled with exaggerations that make it difficult for people to get degrees to make sensible decisions so its difficult what they need to do and to help them do witches make the decision. I am struck as you walk through the politicians, they managed to disappear the role of the Community College they say you can be a welder without college but then ignore the Community College but then if you asked them what they are for, they are for the Community College. Do you have any thoughts on that dynamic why they dont seem to understand the Community College . I feel like you know more about this question than i do but there is something about that word we have given a lot of negative connotations so talk about where students learn this generally means Community College. But it has an image to be something unpalatable and in fact it is a beautiful american idea that can do one of two things. One is to provide high quality job training weather nursing, emt, it specialist , or a welder or to provide a Good Foundation for a fouryear degree thats what they can do on a regular basis but because of the way of Everything Else we have talked about we have battled those institutions with the job of taking care of students have been given other opportunities with very little resources because we have cut their budget. In the book you ran out of one of the people from high school but to play a role in his life so then you found your future sibling so tell us what you saw. So this was a young man named orie and west a North Carolina there are three different students of the intersection of twoyear institutions not all strictly speaking our Community Colleges but none of them love school or were dying to be in a classroom but they all found that without any extra credentials meant they were trapped in some type of lowwage work and very unstable weather that was service work or manual labor. And her all of them they felt they wanted another alternative so that took two different avenues and he ended up studying welding go he was never School Person is not dying to go to college there was a lot that he loved he was learning a lot like welding but financially it was so difficult for him to make ends meet to find the support that he needed because of budget cuts still trying to make his way to that degree. So moving toward those solutions you talk about the inequality and how many people so when they think of the problems of higher ed rethink the Higher Education system at large but those who are uninformed or misguided. And you can see that by lets just give them some good wage data. So what did you learn about the validity of that . It is very confusing to be asked 17 yearold at the best of times and the best of resources. Those who are in communities where there is not a lot of resources or Family Resources if they just talk to a group of students about their College Plans i did and harlem in rural pennsylvania and rural texas but they were very confused of the right option and they felt a responsibility when i would say what are you going to do to come up with an answer. But they felt they were just grasping at something that they heard of so it struck me that what a bad job we are doing, all of us to provide them with useful information and support. So part of that is just good advice some just that the options are not that great so for some of those counselors to figure out the right pathway is difficult for those three students that i mentioned partly was just hard for them to decide on a path because there are not great paths for them. But they try to say if they need information and advice we are experts maybe there is a six dollars solution that really has seized higher adding capture the imagination we have to put more counselors into high schools or send people out to do personal work with them what did you find . Is there a solution on the cheap . Not on the cheap but internationally you talk about specifically targeted at super high achieving low income students and this was an experiment done several years ago with a sent these information packets to students that were selected based on their income or the income of their neighborhood and their test scores in early on there was some indication that these information packets you go to a more selective institution then you think about and you could get Financial Aid and that it made a difference but when it was is replicated by the College Board they found a negligible impact. The way that was done it didnt give us a chance to figure out why so information should make a difference and it is true these are not even average achieving students so the fact that so many are continuing to go to institutions could have more resources that is puzzling but they havent answered what is missing. I got more knowledge from your book and the publications in that regard and i had to ask myself did it has something to do with the change of the motivation . Are there other things that are trumping the information that yes i know i could go to the school and the price would be lower but thats not real to my life. It is a possibility in the way we dont know what is going on. So what is forgotten that most of the students were found to be the income typical path that may allow them to attend or to Public Institutions and most of those students were white a disproportionate number were white and rural. So i think there is a lot going on in those communities going on with culture and politics that affects the decisions those students are making with that bride generalization that i cannot support with data but it struck me to be in urban communities or low income communities who had not gone to college where without resources and going to a highly Selective College was a good thing even if you didnt have much information in the were all White Communities it is the opposite even going away or out of stat state, and that affected a lot of the students. So we have a habit of thinking low income students and students of color but theres also white rural students especially in red states who are just not interested going to institution selected of Higher Education. I have to say this gently that people have written a lot about why that is. So if we read the book that talks about the hollowing out of the middle but the threat that the community feel about their best and brightest leaving and what does that do when we think they are not coming back. Similarly there is a book called the politics of resentment and i couldnt help but to notice the Rural Communities were confident to look at gw uw madison with suspicion you want to take our kids away you will not send it back to the farm because once they are gone, they are gone so i tend to think part of it is we do have to broaden our theories of action for part of that is that dynamic. You are right but it also comes down to conversations of the family of fathers and mothers and daughters and sons and grandparents and thats hard to think about in terms of Public Policy. Is our policy to get those high achieving students out of those communities or not . And i feel thats where i have trouble, there is a lot of scholarship in that area but we have trouble thinking to set that dynamic, we have trouble thinking rationally about those issues. And to see the options. There are counties in pennsylvania. So talk about Online College but there is also Broadband Access what if there was a twoyear college . Or is it that people need to leave because think of what she could do what she could do when she went off that could never be achieved so really the talent must go away to be fully recognized. Thats really interesting point with the data i didnt know. That is valuable but then it complicates the political point so why are the voters defunding the Public Institutions this is why kept asking it would seem to be a great investment to fully fund that Community College so people like him could stay and get a good job and get good training. I think thats true in rural pennsylvania as well but these are the ones that are cutting their funding the most. It does feel like that could be a solution of the they have to go away problem. So it does feel like a paradox. The ones doing the cutting are the actual legislators. They have the eye are about the fouryear schools twoyear schools get lost in the conversation. So certainly that would make another great book. Maybe i overgeneralize that people are most likely to vote for legislatures. It is true. This is not your first book. I want to ask that you are very pointed in your critique of which i appreciated your other book how children succeed is very different in my view and it seemed to focuses on grit this focuses more on systemic problems. Is that an evolution in your thinking in my reading that the wrong way . Panic i think it is. I feel like how to succeed is a book of a few Different Things that was noncognitive skills and i looked at that from a few different ways and those that call that Character Strength in trying to teach it but the research that i found most important was the medical by a medical research through the traumatic environment to have a longterm effect on young people and how that can counteract. So i was looking at that structural approach but i was looking at it through the lens of individual children. And also at interventions and those that intervened with specific children like pre k that will change the situation around the child when i started looking at this book i thought that i might follow that same model working with specific students and that is a good example of that but i was struck by an Higher Education those obstacles were solstice systemic that is an evolution in my own thinking that it is a difference in the system. In the final chapter of the book, this is one of my favorites and the original recipients and at 92 he still speaks about the importance of that legislation i actually point to that because we talk about the transformative power and now he references how that paid off so tell me what you learned from speaking to those im so glad. I talked to a few veterans of world war ii who went to school on the g. I. Bill growing up in massachusetts and immigrant from ireland and a son of a factory worker went to fight world war ii and came back went to northeastern it changed his life and his familys life and the lives of allied of the people during that era. What struck me reading the research i didnt know the history of the g. I. Bill and how it was written. Now we look back that everybody agreed on that there were two ways. First of all when it was written in 1943 thinking nobody would take the government up on it. At the time college was very exclusive Institution Just for rich kids 10 percent of graduates would go to college and the idea they would want to go to college and seem crazy but yet but there is also this thought right before the end of world war ii that if they do show up on the College Campuses it would be a disaster the president of the university of chicago talked about the educational hobo jungle would break out if these kids would show up. Than they did with the undergraduate population doubled but they also succeeded in turned out to be great students. That is the most instructive part of the story for me because we are in another moment that we could expand Higher Education that there are students that seem unlikely to succeed in college based on the preconceived notions of what a Successful College student looks like so we dont think we need to support them with Public Investment in what the g. I. Bill showed is when when the country decides to invest in those College Students in a robust way, they succeed. And the individual anecdotal evidence with any given institution, they do succeed before the nation as a whole b have given up on the idea of expansion. And you also know we expanded high school. Youre always amazed that people think that we just cannot expand education or afford to but what is your take . We would not have dominated the 20th century. This is another theory still working on that the United States draft one drastically expanded the percentage of students graduating from high school nearly 50 percent in two years but it was mostly that it makes sense but now it seems odd in retrospect that communities looked at the science they werent economists just watching with the employers needed and they notice technology was changing and farms and factories and in order to get the jobs that they needed they needed more than a sixth or eighth grade education for they had the sensible reaction of get them in aid one an education and do it collectively building free Public Education and spend the tax money sending those whether our kids are somebody elses. And that collective notion it just made sense to people so now we are at a similar notion this was 100 years ago we thought 12 grade is what you need to deal with the technology of the 19 twenties and now we have technology 100 years to fit advanced for still debating if a 12th grade education is enough and all of those signs of the economy in the labor market but now those that could respond to that to say lets educate our young people so now identity and snobbery in politics and partisanship when clearly there is just a sign our young people need our support and help and skills and credentials to survive in the current economy one century ago we heard that in a collective fashion and now we respond in the irrational and selfless one selfish fashion. What about the big election next year what does that mean for inequality and higher ed quek. Thats really hard to tell. It is striking from the democratic campaigns talk about fairly radical ideas talk about public Higher Education. Personally i dont think that specific proposal is quite baked yet for go they tend to go toward a consumer may not one mentality whereby contrast with the g. I. Bill lets invest in our students that the other was lets level the Playing Field and invest in students. So my hope is that progressive candidates would understand those two principles would make the most from the democratic point of view to create a better public Higher Education system. Thank you so much im glad you waited into this territory. Thank you. During the program. I know you all are very busy and so i am especially appreciative of you taking the time to be here for this very timely program. For those attending for the first time, the forms began in the 1980s