How We Look at College

Last Thursday in the National Review's Phi Beta Cons blog, George Leef commented on the way we look at universities and how they look at us. Leef's post, Striving for Socioeconomic Diversity, offers two main points, one of which I agree with and one which I have a big problem with. He presents a very good point saying there's no reason to see it as a "reward to go to an elite college or university," with many teenagers today mystified by the likes of Harvard, Yale, and some of the other college elites. Along with this, Leef finds it hard to justify the characterization by colleges of a poor individual who succeeds, as a "striver" or someone who has "overcome obstacles."

Is going to an ivy league university really going to make a difference in the long run? If anything it might increase possible salaries and connections, but as Leef speculates, you probably won’t have a "brighter, more lucrative career" at a school like Duke than a smaller school such as ECU. To get everything out of these top schools you have to be at the top of a "more intellectually competitive,” which sure does require a lot of drive and eagerness to succeed. To assume "schools with higher U.S. News rankings are “better” schools," and that these schools are your ticket to success is totally wrong. Ultimately it's not the degree from Harvard that's going to matter, but what you're going to do with it in the real world that will determine your success.

Believing that "being relatively poor in the U.S. does not entail deprivation of anything essential," is like saying being rich doesn’t have any benefits. If you don't consider a strong education essential, then I don't know what you do. In many cases poor Americans are strongly deprived of the same standards of education of even the middle-class, with their schools usually struggling to even keep their education system afloat. To go along with this they lack many of the resources and opportunities available to many others which is arguably just as important as the education itself. Leef states that "there are non-poor students who have managed to deal with difficulties," which is true, but the two difficulties are usually on two very different levels and are hard to compare.

In an ideal world to many, such as Leef, colleges in acceptance would look at nothing but academic interest and aptitude, but that's just not the world we live in. There's much more to a person than just academic success, and to look at a person as a whole makes a whole lot more sense than just test results. Just because someone got a great score on the SAT doesn't indicate at all that they will do great in the real world. Interestingly enough it’s those people with the interesting stories and that come from a poor family that are more prepared to face all the difficulties that life has to offer.