A new book just appeared, written by Dr. Anthony A. Jack of Harvard.  The title- The Privileged Poor.

The premise of the book hit home.

When I first went to college, among all acceptances, I chose Brooklyn Poly.  Now, Poly was not the most prestigious of the bunch- although it was certainly a darned good engineering school.

But, I was young.  And, to be honest, I was poor.  Not homeless, but poor.

And, Poly was the best engineering school in the city of New York.  More importantly, the folks going to Poly were no richer than I.  (As a rule of thumb, it was well known that the annual income of the folks who went to Poly ranged around the lower middle class.  You, know the ones that just barely exceed four times the poverty rate.)

Poly was a fantastic school for me.  The educational programs were great- and, on top of that, I was able to meet some very influential folks (like the estimable Samuel Ruben [the inventor of the dry cell battery] who funded the bulk of my tuition, department chiefs for a bunch of hospital specialties, folks from the Sloan Foundation, theater heads, etc.).

The education gave me a chance to grow up, to become comfortable with myself and my situation.  And, since tuition wasn’t one of my burdens, and with my [nearly] full-time work position, I was able to accumulate some money of my own.

When I went to grad school in Cambridge, the fact that the folks there were pretty wealthy was much less intimidating than it would have been a few years earlier.  (Those schools were among my potential choices for undergraduate education when I chose Poly.)

Which is the premise of Dr. Jack’s book.  He describes how ecstatic young, poor kids are when they find out they can obtain an Ivy League education.  Their “golden ticket” out of their situation.

Except…

When Spring Break comes around, these kids can’t go off like the other kids in the school.  Worse, some schools won’t let the kids stay in the dorms (they close them during the holidays)- and these kids lack the funds to go home and come back.  Or, if they aren’t banished from the dorms, they find their meal plans are not functional over the holidays.

Or, they watch kids call in interior decorators to spruce up their dorm rooms.  They notice their Old Navy clothes just don’t measure up when compared to the Burberry of their peers.

Some of the kids elect to clean dorm bathrooms, because those jobs provide more cash than some of the more politically acceptable ones their peers choose.  Which sets them up as ‘maids’ or ‘janitors’ to their richer peers.

While the Ivy League may work hard to convince the ‘privileged poor’ to matriculate at their institutions, they have a long way to go to provide a welcome mat for these kids all year long.

Maybe the Boards of Trustees should read this book.

 

By the way, today is International Women’s Day.   So, consider all the things you never knew were provided to you through the actions of a woman- whether it’s in science, technology, the arts, or business.  It takes all of us to make this world better.