The Sticky Ladder

A few weeks ago, I listed David Brooks as a favored conservative commentator. Here's why. In a recent column entitled "The Sticky Ladder", Brooks takes on one of the biggest myths of this country: that we're a land of equal opportunity. In particular, he focuses in on the issue my organization was created to address: the barriers to higher education for low-income students.

Brooks explains the part of the equation he no doubt understands the best: the upper-middle-class enclaves, where families support excellent schools, everyone assumes college attendance as the norm, and each child often has multiple adults shepherding them from their resource-rich, high-achieving elementary and secondary schools into resource-rich, high-achieving colleges. He talks less about the other part of the equation, although it's implied: poor students in an environment where college is not only not expected, it's often assumed to be at least out of reach and maybe even a waste of time. People understand that the cost of college may be a barrier for poor students. They're much less likely to understand that even if college were free, there is a long, complicated process required to get from a high school biology classroom to a university political science hall, and some (mostly wealthier) people know how to work that process, and others (mostly poor) don't. If this isn't immediately obvious to you, think about going on campus visits, taking the SAT, filling out applications, filing the FAFSA, lining up housing, and registering for classes. Then think about how one would go about those tasks if she didn't have a parent, guidance counselor, or other interested adult to explain how to make it all happen.

Here's a startling statistic: poor students in the highest quartile of academic achievement attend college at about the same rate as rich students in the lowest quartile of academic achievement. Translated, that means that if you're rich but dumb (or lazy), you're still as likely to go to college as the highest-achieving poor kid. Only 7% of poor kids can expect to graduate from college by the time they're 24; about half of rich kids do. And when college graduates earn roughly a million dollars more in their lifetime than high school graduates, college attendance and degree attainment are the difference between a life of scraping by (if you're lucky) and a life of prosperity.

As long as that's true, we cannot and should not pretend that we've achieved the goal of an equal opportunity society. Brooks concludes that this means "it is silly to make a distinction between economic policy and social policy." Said differently, economic issues are values issues. If you believe that, too, make that point loud and clear whenever you get the chance.