Like about the book is you really spent time with students and their families and College Students are so different that now they taken to calling them Real College Student so im curious on your take. You are right the demographics today the age is different i focused on students who were right out of high school so what is that transition out of high school and into the workplace . That captured all of the college prep on population but i want to understand how that pathway has diverged in most of the way those who had a lot of Family Income going down a much more traditional path and those that had many more obstacles in their path. We get into those different issues but now what is your own path coming out of high school quack. I had a rocky. I grew up in canada after finishing high school in toronto went to columbia and i survived for one semester then dropped out and i bicycled around the Southern United States for a few months and ended up half a year later at yale and went there for three semesters and dropped out again that i did in internship at harpers magazine starting my journalism career then i thought i might go back to college but i was never a big fan of college and i felt like getting out of journalism when journalism is what i was looking for with exciting and intellectual conversation i tried to figure out how to stay. So we can tell its not like there is a traditional path and everything came up rosie and you wonder whats happening but part of the reason is you went to a lot of different places and you talk about a wide variety of students maybe they are right out of high school but they are not cut from the same cloth so how did you decide in the project of where to go . And went to 21 different states talking to hundreds of students and i was just trying to get the lay of the land but at the same time i was looking for a number of students and eventually i found a few characters a couple in North Carolina, one in new york, a few in dc and they would not claim they were representatives but they felt like together it was a portrait. Were you trying to make sure with those other colleges and universities quack. One of the strange things at the universities i started with those in high school and there were a few including the main characters who were super high achieving low income students and then it would have been interested in their path so that leads to those institutions but then the university of texas and that was through happenstance so i just kept coming back. So lets dig into some of the students i think a lot of people will find shannon in particular to be a heartbreaker and a fairy tale. How did you meet her quack. We met through a program called leda leadership enterprise for a diverse america which is a Scholarship Program that selects 100 low income students in junior year from across the country all super high achieving academically and brings them to gather the summer after the junior year like high achieving College Boot Camp and most of whom are either from the low Income School where they are the super high achieving or they are sometimes one of the few students of color with a high academic track but they dont have students like them so is at that summer program. So now she becomes the opening character in the book and those students you have gotten to know really well it is a content decision so what is it about the story so the person i want them to meet is shannon quack. So i wrote two completely different drafts. So now i think of course but it took me four months. I cannot claim it was obvious to me right away but i think that makes sense as the initial character and one is with this momentous day on her College Experience and that felt like a great stroke of luck journalistically more than anybody that it met it was a true believer in the idea of Higher Education with the force of social mobility and the idea that admissions what is her hard work so conceptually thats like the right place to start so to question those two assumptions but at that moment she was at this crisis point if she still believe those are not. Is that unusual to approach College Admissions with a general belief that it is your talent and hard work quack. I think she is unusual in all sorts of ways. So we as a nation have high a deals how Higher Education works including young people so they figure out the rules. One of the things i was really struck by is if it teaches people to be cynical and how to play the game so that would suggest even those that are raised relatively wealthy with the idea that this is real that that that the College Admission officers. So a tutor in washington dc charges 400 an hour very affluent students but also bills more hours than anybody else in his companies hes very good and successful at what he does. It is an interesting question that you are posing but the affluent students that come to him already have the idea that higher admissions is a game they have been thinking about their Extracurricular Activities and they are wise on that side but they still think of the test of the sat and act as a measure of their worth. Because in their communities and also College Admissions it has given so much weight so they walk into the office to believe the number on the sat or sat will not only determine about their future but also determine who they are and their selfworth with the value of their school and it is that pressure that he feels the paradox to do worse. One thing that was fascinating is the people that they pulled ahead of so now you race ahead and it could change your life. So i appreciate the way they try to wrestle if it really would change her life. But you wrestled with the researchers. Talk about the effort to make heads or tails of what we actually know or the claim to go to a college because you have higher scores pays off. There is an ongoing debate whether it makes a difference to say the affluent students it doesnt matter that much so what is the actual data debate that economists understand about who was using what numbers correctly but also almost a religious debate among americans in general including parents and despite their competitiveness they dont want to believe it matters as much as it does sometimes they fear their kids will not go to get into the schools but also others believe it doesnt matter so much so that they could leapfrog over other students this is not really something that matters it just is a frivolous luxury. So the competing study and then to increase your lifetime earnings and so where i come down on this for any individual student its not a lifeanddeath decision. We often tell ourselves but the fact that these institutions are having such an effect that such an effect given the fact the student body are demographically so different. But its only part of what the schools can spend so part of that School Spending matters that based on what kind of money they have but not that long ago the difference between the institutions how much they were spending between 4,018,000 per student per year. And to be in American Society the most affluent institutions and individuals this is part of policy for example so the wealthier institutions can shield themselves with their endowment but the Community Colleges dont get as much attention in those but then to have adequate support. You are right it is an individual decision what is strange about this system is that some of those decisions are being made by us cutting funding on public Higher Education so that number is 16 percent so that has a huge and devastating effect on Public Education while at the same time a small number of super affluent individuals are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to a very small number two institutions of Higher Education into those individual decisions they make a huge difference. It is stark to say the least one of the people you talk about is kiki who goes to one of those schools that is featured in the Century Foundation report of princeton to claim they have taxpayer support more than a new Jersey Community college which is the reverse of what people would imagine that the results are intense so that princeton doesnt even have to pay taxes on its land although it has voluntarily done so that most people would think that kiki being at princeton versus a new Jersey Community college would find life extremely easy. So talk to me what you do see happening for her. Thats really complicated and try to understand that and capture it so there is a low income africanamerican student who had a chaotic upbringing but to the k12 education was spent at an affluent Public Education in Charlotte North Carolina but then got that preparation so when she got to princeton academically should a great from the very start her first assignment was to see and then nothing but as afterwards a lot of people think a young student without a lot of money going to a place like that can struggle academically not true for her. She was struck even with those experience in her life to be a low income person among high income people she was still struck by how culturally and socially weird how was it was for her how concentrated that privilege was even among africanamericans where she found a kinship but they were much more likely to go to private school or children of immigrants where she was from generational poverty that was confusing made her feel she didnt believe belong it made her anxious so she is an interesting case because i feel at the same time she felt that this is where i was meant to be my whole life academically intellectually she love philosophy this is what i was meant to be doing so that is part of why her freshman year was so complicated on the one hand the place shes been looking at her whole life. I appreciated black is not black is not black and she was called not a black black but especially around her family that could be intense but to be as low income as she was she was taking care of financially and i notice you said something that very few of us have said out loud that too is a just trying to finance herself but also sending money home to her famil family. So can you say more what you saw their cracks because that is so prevalent if you like its not allowed you should have expected family contribution not the family should expect your contribution. Yes prickle that was true her family moved with her to new jersey who was about an hour away so now suddenly she got to full tuition scholarships she was not rolling in money but she could get a cheeseburger when she wanted to. And her family not far away was still struggling financially intensely so and so she sent some of her aid to them a few times and i did report on that and i felt that for those of us who are not from that situation could be judgmental about that that is a terrible thing her mom would do to expect that many so way totally understand kikis point of view and her moms point of view so i dont dwell on that too much because i do think there are ways that they would be more judgmental. That was one of the hardest things for me to write about it just feels like thats one of the things that weighs on her so you kind of wonder if isnt there a way that . I dont know but the other that it seems like doing more impressive job to keep them on track of success than any other institution to be a kind of place where they would know more because that social psychological approach to education and they recognize students basic needs because i was struck that they provide every student with breakfast and lunch every day at a time where many had been food insecure that is amazing in the employ social workers so what is it about this place to attend basic needs and see the whole person . Because they dont do that at princeton. I had not thought of it like that thats a great question. So a twoyear institution in Downtown Chicago at leo the university which that is a high income mostly white students and the rupe mission is different to enroll black and latino almost entirely low income mostly not very highscoring on the sat so this is a population have very low College Outcomes so i say i thought they were doing a better job its not that the Graduation Rate was sky high that they were working with the student population and they were graduating a significant number so that approach was the dean of students described it as a very intrusive model so the basic content to step back and let them figure it out themselves and there are some things to be said for that idea but when you have students with the handsoff model that means they will strong struggle or fail out then the notion is there is so much going on in life not only academically but they have families and Food Insecurity and with all of those different points but it goes to that jesuit model that maybe it is different but i think thats what inspires him of that concept of what college can become but its not a necessary part i do think that caring culture is as well. And i have seen that at amarillo but it strikes me that you are right the language was intrusive but the students at princeton dont have people who are leaning into their lives. Its their parents and the parents that they hire who helicopter over them but when the school does it the parents are involved they dont have the resources to be involved like the princeton parents are does it change their ability to get the education . Kiki wants so badly if somebody could lean in more would she have gotten even more from that quick. Thats a good question. Princeton suspends a lot more money on student therapy with counselors and advisors and mentors and therapist with every kind of help that you need as a princeton student but its not intrusive in the same way or at least thats the way that kiki perceived it she looked at it is fair and was grateful for it. But i dont think she did have that same student from the feeling as the rupe student that somebody is looking out for me and cares about me. Another writer right now has a book that we talked about and he lived at this as well that when they say they care but then you come to understand what is and is not in the domain of what you have been given. So discovering his work on this journey. He was really influential his book is called the privilege poor and i met him three years ago he was featured in an article in the New York Times maybe the first or second called firstgeneration movement so i got to know him a little bit so yes that chapter about kiki is her and her experience that that gave me a superstructure with those highly selective institutions. Is just so powerful but i really did appreciate the way you advances need to keep the institution. But you do go for in this book with the arguments that people make and one that is so rampant is the idea we know that college is not every for everyone that we should talk about welders and the idea as the effective argument we should not worry so much about opening access to college. I feel like the complication of the welding argument is there are two arguments going on at the same time one is a genuine labor economic argument in which it is a complicated story the other is a partisan political argument and they have overlapped in a way that makes it difficult to disentangle in a way it makes it difficult for a lot of people to judge because the questions of identity and respect have been tied up how we make simple Economic Analysis so with welding is you need a post secondary training to become a welder most welders go to Community College and get a twoyear Associates Degree there are apprenticeships you can do there are some others that just do shop class in high school and some are for profit at other technical colleges that offer shorter colleges at high prices. So they do need some type of college and then there was a lot of rhetoric in those years that welders were making a ton of many of the figures of a hundred 50000, 200, 350,000 per year and anecdotally and in reality it is possible but most other professions when judging their value or opportunities available they dont talk about the highest earners nobody says be a writer because jk rowling makes a Million Dollars but we have a tendency to do that with welding to keep hitting those anecdotes and then we look at the data from the bureau of labor statistics the median wage is 41000 per year and at the 90th percentile is 63000 that is about the Median Income for a household in the United States 90 percent make less and the median Family Income which is fine. Its a good job it is stable and it pays more than the minimum wage. If you go to a Community College that is well supported by the public and get the Associates Degree without a lot of debt thats a great pathway. That we have surrounded welding with the political arguments that make it difficult for young people to get degrees and then make sensible decisions we created those with this identity for them to do what they need to do it for us to help them do to make those decisions to get to that middle class life. Im sad we walk through the politicians but they actually manage to disappear the role of the Community College they said you could be a welder without college and then ignore the Community College but if you asked somebody what they are for, they are for the Community College so why is it we dont understand publicly Community College . I feel you know more about this question than i do but there is something about that word we give a lot of negative connotations talking about where they learn technical or Community College. But it has an image to be something unpalatable in fact it is a beautiful american idea institution in your community that can provide high quality job training in a very specific location of emt, nursing, welder and the other is providing a Good Foundation at low expense for a four year degree thats it they can do on a regular basis. Because of Everything Else we have battled those with the job of taking care of students who have not been given other opportunities with very little resources because we have cut their budgets. It just wasnt the people out of high school the intersex with Community College but to play a role in his life so you found a way to their siblings . You mean the student studying welding . So in a community in western North Carolina so i follow these three different students different intersections with twoyear institutions not is all strictly speaking Community Colleges but none of them loved school neither were dying to be in a classroom but they knew getting out of high school with anything else meant they were trapped in a certain type of lowwage work and very unstable weather that was service work or technology or manual labor. So all of them so they all went to a local Community College and he had never been a School Person and there was a lot that he loved but financially it was so difficult to find the support that he needed just to get to the courses because of budget cuts to the institution who he is still trying to make his way through their. You do that yourself im sure you could understand but that moving towards these solutions with the any quality and how unhappy people are you write some people say when i think of the problems of higher ed is not in university or Higher Education but with the students who are uninformed and misguided and you can see that if they say just give the good wage data and show the numbers they can earn so what did you learn about the validity of that . It is very confusing. With the best of times and the best of resources its hard for a 17 yearold and in those communities where there is not a lot of resources when i would visit the communities and senior year talking with the students about their College Plans did that in harlem in texas in rural pennsylvania they were confused about the right option and they talk about this responsibility of what you will do as every adult asks to come up with an answer. But they felt they were grasping at something it struck me at what a bad job we are doing all of us of providing useful information to make those decisions in a sensible way part of it is the options are not that great and for some of those counselors to figure out the right pathway for those three students that i mentioned it was just hard for them to decide a path because they are not great paths for them. But for them to say if they need information we can send them information and advice and you talk about that idea has really seized higher ed and Higher Education we dont have to put more counselors into high schools or to do any personal work. What did you find . Is there a solution for the cheap . Interestingly to be targeted specifically with the super high achieving low income student and several years ago they sent these information packets based on the income of their neighborhood and early on there were indications to go to a civil one and then you could get Financial Aid but when that experiment was replicated that was a negligible impact so the problem we ate with the way that was done is it didnt give us a chance to figure out why and what is going on but what is so puzzling is information should make a difference and it is true even lower than average achieving students, so the fact that so many are continuing to go to institutions where they cant have more resources is still puzzling but that hasnt answered what is missing. And i got more knowledge from them than the peer review publications in that regard. Doesnt have something to do with the change of the motivation . They are motivated less by hope and more by fear. Are there other things trumping the information that yes i know i could go to the school and the prices lower but thats not real for my life. That is a possibility. And looking at the way that data has been analyzed we dont know whats going on but with us against them is that most of the students have been found of the income and that disproportionate number and going on in those communities and politics that affect the decisions of the students and i cannot support it with data and with urban communities with a lot of black and latinos and did not have a lot of resources so that our kids should go to college and even to have much information even then it was the opposite and those going to hire collective educations that affected a lot of the students for those who have internalized it themselves and we havent thought of low income students there is a whole phenomenon going on of white rural students who are just not interested in institutions of selective. I will say this gently that those who are not economists have written a lot about why that is so i get to thinking if we turn to marias work and her book how hollowing out the middle but there is a threat a Rural Community will feel that there intellectual youth are leaving and if they dont come back if there is a framework of the politics of resentment and i couldnt help when i listened that there were one the Rural Communities of washington one wisconsin View University with suspicion because they want to take their kids away. Because once they are gone they are gone. With those different theories of action. And with that political dynamic dynamics. Bad it also comes down to confrontations around the family and those complicated emotions and thats hard to think about with Public Diplomacy is the right policy to get more high achieving students and there is some great scholarship in that area but to set that dynamic of our politics we have trouble thinking. There are 18 counties in pennsylvania. So talking about Online College so what would happen if there was a nearby if there was a bachelors degree and what kiki could do when she went off and the world could never be achieved but the talent really must go away to be recognized. That is an interesting point and that is valuable but with that complicated political point and those that defund those and those that are going to school in western North Carolina it would be a great investment for his community and get a good job and good training and a better job than he could fight a lot of the state governments with public and Higher Education so it does feel like having that could be a solution to that problem so it does feel like a paradox. And with those legislators there are people behind that but those that have nearly the same kind of money. That would make another great book of what has happened. Maybe i am overgeneralizing and people are most likely to vote for those legislatures. And very pointed in your critique and there are many sacred cows which i appreciated and your other book how children succeed but am i reading that the wrong way but with me it was noncognitive skills and from the point of view and the point of view like educators and the research that i found the most important with that Developmental Research can have a longterm effect on young people and that i was trying to look at that structural approach in those communities and had something to do through the lens of mutual children and also looking at interventions that i was most drawn to with those specific children and what can we do in a school or a pre k or a home that will change the situation so when i started working on this book i thought i might follow that same model with those specific interventions with intervention and change things. And it is a good example of that but i was more struck when i reported in Higher Education the obstacles were so systematic so something of an evolution in my own thinking that is a difference in the system. So this is one of my favorites with the original g. I. Bill and my grandfather is one of those that 92 years old with the importance of that legislation actually point to that to talk about the transformative power of how that paid off. So tell me what you learned to say im so glad what you captured because we would lose them. Talking to a few veterans of world war ii who went to school on the g. I. Bill and then to grow up in massachusetts and an immigrant from ireland and a factory worker went to fight in world war ii and then came back and heard about the g. I. Bill and it changed his familys life and the life of a lot of people in the country. But i did not know the history of how the g. I. Bill was writte written. Now we look back at something everybody agreed on and was behind but first of all when it was written in 1943, it was thought that nobody word really take the government up on this. At the time college was very exclusive just for rich kids. 10 percent of High School Graduates would go to college. The gis were factory workers children and children of farmers so the idea to go to college was crazy. But then there was also a thought before the end of world war ii that if they all did show up on College Campuses it would be a disaster. The university of chicago talked about educational hobo jungle if all these workingclass kids show up. Than the student population of american colleges doubled. But they also succeeded and turned out to be great students. That to me is the most instructive part so we are in another moment of doubting to expand Higher Education if they are unlikely to succeed in college based on the preconceived notions. So we dont need to support those students with investment and what the g. I. Bill showed is when the country decides to invest in a robust way, there is evidence of anecdotal place by place evidence to invest in any given institution. But for the nation of a whole we have given up on that idea. And you note we expanded high school. Always amazed that people think we just cannot expand education or never afford to but what if we had not expanded high school . What would have happened . So this is another. Im working on in the early 20th century through 1910 and 1942 drastically expand those high schools in the percentage from tentative percent through 50 percent but now it just makes sense but in a way it seems odd because we have so much trouble doing this because they look at this watching what the employers needed and they noticed technology was changing and so that in order to get the jobs that they needed they need more than a six though an eighth grade education so they had a sensible reaction of lets give them an education collectively. Lets build three public high schools in every community in the United States and sending everyone to school. So that notion just made sense to people so now it is a similar notion with 100 years ago to deal with the technology of 1920 and now it is 100 years to fast and we are still debating if a 12th grade education is enough. Obviously it is not and all the signs are not enough but now like those who could respond to those to say educate our young people turning into identity and snobbery and partisanship when truly theres just a sign young people need our help and support more education and skills to survive in the current economy. One century ago we responded in a rational and collective fashion so now we respond in the air rational and selfless one fashion. There is a big election next year so what does that mean for inequality and higher ed quick. Great question. It is striking some of the democratic campaigns talk about fairly radical ideas of changing Higher Education. That those specific proposals i think are not quite bait yet. They tend toward the consumer mentality whereas really by contrast the g. I. Bill says lets invest but the other was lets level the playing field. So my hope is that progressive candidates would understand those two principles from a democratic point of view with a better bigger part of Public Education system. Thank you so much i am so glad you waited into this territory