For my first few years as an assistant professor, when it came time to draft my annual performance review, I would reflect on my professional activities. But while writing this year's appraisal, I found myself contemplating my place in private higher education.
After two and a half years as a faculty member, and another nine as a student, I continue to experience the uncomfortable feeling of being an outsider in the ivory tower. That feeling has nothing to do with my institutional "fit" as I am content in my current position, nor with the lingering self-doubt that so often plagues young academics embarking on a faculty career. It has to do with socioeconomic class.
The disconnect I often feel stems from a fundamental difference in worldview between myself and others I have encountered in academe. Luckily, that difference has not affected me negatively in professional terms; I continue to forge strong teaching and mentoring relationships with my students, and enjoy the company of my fellow faculty members. Nevertheless, I sometimes feel like an outsider looking in, as if I will never truly understand the lives of some of the people I interact with on a daily basis.
As an academic, I would like to think that socioeconomic class has a negligible role in college education. Yet my own personal experience, and that of others I know, tells a different story.
I grew up in a blue-collar family in an upstate New York town with parents who worked hard to provide me with the educational opportunities they were unable to enjoy. While they generally supported my educational goals, several members of my extended family viewed a private college education as an endeavor tailor-made for the wealthy, and considered it inferior to the "honest" work of a traditional trade.
That point of view made a clear impression on me, but I never fully bought into the rhetoric of reverse classism, and I was fortunate enough (through generous financial aid) to earn a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. from respected private institutions. It was during those years that I first began to feel like an outsider with a visitor's pass catching a glimpse of the "other half."
In my freshman year, it was hard to miss the fact that many of my new acquaintances had attended private prep schools, drove new European cars, paid full tuition, and spent school breaks vacationing in exotic foreign locales. Their experiences were in sharp contrast to my life of working over break, staying close to home, and nearly always worrying about money. Although I formed deep friendships with several of my well-off classmates, a part of me felt as though I could never truly understand what their lives were like, nor could they understand mine.
I now teach at a private university with students who share many of the economic demographics of those who attended my alma maters. To a certain extent, the same feelings of disconnect I experienced as a student resurface in my interactions with some of my current students and colleagues.
Many of my students hail from backgrounds of great privilege. To their credit, very few live up to the stereotype of the insensitive and spoiled college student. Still, I sometimes sense in them a fundamental lack of understanding regarding their uncommon position of economic, social, and political advantage.
On a recent student caving trip (I am adviser for the student outdoors club), we drove though some impoverished rural areas and saw several examples of severely substandard housing. As we passed dwellings constructed of junked school buses, scrap metal, and other refuse, the students appeared genuinely shocked, and I was surprised to learn that many thought that such abject poverty was largely nonexistent in the United States.
I was not stunned by the poverty we encountered, as such scenes are unfortunately common in rural upstate New York. I began to wonder if I was the only person in the group who personally knew of people growing up in homes without indoor plumbing or electricity. Was I the only trip participant who was aware that there were still places where children do not regularly attend school because they reside on dirt roads (that are beyond where the school buses travel) and have no other means of getting to school each day? Was I the only one who understood that many rural folks hunt deer not merely for recreation but to put food on the table?
It seemed to me as though the students' position in life had obscured the greater reality of how a large number of their fellow citizens get by -- or don't, as the case may be.
At times, I have perceived a similar disconnect in fellow faculty members; for some, their fortunate life circumstances seem to insulate them from the harsher realities of the world outside academe. I have been perplexed by colleagues who recognize the plight of the working class, yet perpetuate negative stereotypes about rural and working-class people.
I am consistently shocked by self-identified socially "liberal" academics who send their children to private elementary and high schools, presumably to shelter them from the very socioeconomic diversity they claim to appreciate. I have sometimes found myself on the "outside" of faculty conversations that portray blue-collar life in a way that I find degrading and offensive.
That happened recently during a discussion I was having with some colleagues about gun control. Although I agreed with their pro-gun-control stance, I took issue with their portrayal of rural folks as uneducated "redneck" National Rifle Association members who think that going to Wal-Mart is a big Friday night out. I was stunned because the people who made those remarks would immediately take issue with any stereotype involving gender, ethnicity, or sexuality; yet they seemed oblivious to the classist remarks they were spewing.
Although attempting to balance teaching, research, and scholarship is a major vocational challenge, it seems to me that being a tenure-track faculty member is relatively easy compared to most blue-collar jobs I know of. Although I am as guilty as anyone of griping over relatively petty professional issues, I try to keep those complaints in perspective by recognizing how lucky I am. I will not spend a life of backbreaking labor in a mill or foundry while living in constant apprehension of downsizing or of falling victim to a debilitating workplace accident.
While my blue-collar background has provided me with a perspective profoundly different from those of many people around me, I am not alone in that perspective. Indeed, my closest relationships have typically been with fellow students and colleagues who share my socioeconomic background. I have learned that my feelings of being an outsider operating in a largely foreign landscape are not unique.
Over the years, I have encountered several students who were considering transferring from their private university primarily because they found the privileged environment to be so completely at odds with their own background.
Students from working-class backgrounds shouldn't feel as though they need a social support network of others with similar life experiences in order to make it through four years of school. Although private higher education has come a long way in providing financial support for those outside the highest economic ranks, it sometimes retains the trappings of a place where only the well-to-do truly feel at home.
Because of that, working-class parents often presuppose that private colleges are ill-suited for their children, regardless of the students' academic achievements. It has been my experience that those parents and students often believe that matriculation to a private institution would doom them to four years marked by a struggle to "fit in." I sometimes wonder how many highly talented minds fail to seriously consider an education at a private institution primarily because of that concern.
Private higher education is perhaps the only place in America where individuals from the wealthiest 20 percent of the nation and the poorest 20 percent can interact on presumably equal ground. Their interactions are bound to produce precisely the feelings of isolation I have experienced.
Although I continue to disagree with the simplistic views of private higher education expressed by my extended-family members, I can't help but wonder if there was a small kernel of truth in their statements. As professionals in higher education, we should make it a priority to heighten our awareness of the role that economic status plays in shaping student "fit" at private colleges. In so doing, we can make our institutions truly welcoming to all qualified students, regardless of financial background.
