Humble and Hopeful: Welcoming First-Generation Poor and Working-Class Students to College

Lesson 1: I wish I had known the difference between a “doctor” and a “doctor.”

I had never heard of a Ph.D. until I encountered higher education. At West Liberty State College, my undergraduate school, most professors held master's degrees, but few had Ph.D.'s. Two of my first-semester teachers introduced themselves as “doctor.” I was confused but too scared to ask for clarification. Later in that first week, as I was walking by various faculty offices, I noticed that some had “Dr.” on the door nameplate. Seeing some of these titles, I wondered why this college would hire physicians to teach subjects such as speech, German, and history. It made some sense that M.D.'s would teach the natural sciences, but not business or the humanities; why would someone with all that earning power take a relatively low-paying job? Perhaps they did the work on the side? That seemed unlikely. Even after learning the difference between a Ph.D. and an M.D., it was hard to see the former as real doctors, like those who order lab tests, prescribe medicines, do surgery, or pull teeth.

Later, as a Ph.D. student, I discovered another twist on the “real doctor” versus “not a real doctor” theme. I had become friends with several medical students, and they sometimes kidded me about not being a real doctor. I consulted a dictionary and learned that doctor comes from Latin and means “to teach.” After that, anytime my medical school friends ribbed me about not being a real doctor, I would explain this etymology and say, good-naturedly, of course, that unless they went into teaching they would not be real doctors. I was a doctoral student before I finally learned the original intent of the degree I was seeking.

My initial lack of understanding about these terms was symptomatic of my status as an academic outsider. Research indicates that my peers whose parents had higher socioeconomic status would have developed a significantly larger vocabulary and better language skills early in life. In addition, they would have received more reinforcement for scholastic achievement. Thus, they would likely have heard their parents use the word doctor to refer to professors as well as physicians or to describe career options.

Lesson 2: I wish I had known the real purpose of college before I started

I was far along in my studies before I finally learned why most middle-and upper-class families insist that their kids attend a college or university. I had assumed that a college's only purpose was job training. While I enjoyed reading Ibsen's plays and learning about the discovery of DNA, I kept wondering how this was making me more employable. Meanwhile, my non-college-going, working-class high school chums were building strong earning skills in practical fields such as barbering, jet engine repair, and telephone installation.

One day, another student recommended a certain course to me, saying the teacher was especially good. My friend was right, and then some. The instructor, a man of conspicuously privileged origins, was enthralling from the start. Besides lecturing, at each meeting, he encouraged us to discuss our views about that day's topic. I quickly understood his teaching strategy. He wanted everyone to value doubt and curiosity. The only proposition he rejected outright was an unwillingness to wonder and challenge, even if it meant disagreeing with him. He never lowered your grade if your views differed from his.

One afternoon, maybe halfway through the term, the class was debating some point about formal learning and a student began arguing that higher education should be reformed to make it “more relevant.” He wanted college to give people more “job skills, and not all this literature and philosophy stuff.” I was thinking, “My thoughts exactly!” The professor paused for a moment and then explained, “No, the primary purpose of an undergraduate degree is to teach you more ways to enjoy life. Studying literature, politics, science, art, theater, and philosophy should prepare you for a richer existence, not employment. Go to a trade school if you only want job skills.”

There it was: the kind of wisdom that distinguishes great instructors from the rest. This professor's words washed over me in revelation. How I wish I had known that secret all along. When you grow up hearing family members and neighbors rightly saying that they are lucky to have work, it is hard to think that anyone would spend money on something as ethereal as ensuring that their children have a more enjoyable life rather than a better job.

Since that distant afternoon, I have never heard a better rationale for a liberal arts education. In only a few sentences, this professor had given me an insight that most of my privileged friends treated as a birthright. I finally saw why they valued knowledge for its own sake. As children, they had learned to see the world as a welcoming place where they could expect to succeed. In such a world, higher education served not as an opportunity to better one's economic chances but rather as a socially accepted way to explore new interests.

Ever since that day, it has seemed ironic to me that those who could most benefit from college—as measured by the value that would be added to their lives— are least likely to attend. Even if everyone from the poor and working classes took the same job they would have had without an undergraduate degree, they would still gain the most from a college education because it would teach them more ways to escape the humdrum existence of everyday employment—knowledge that all should receive, not just those raised in privileged circumstances.

Lesson 3: I wish I had known that teeth are such a strong social-class marker

My mother and my grandparents had lost all their teeth early, and my mother always blamed everyone's dental problems on their having “weak teeth.” If you had “strong teeth,” they pretty much lasted whether you cared for them or not. If you had “weak teeth,” no matter how often you brushed, they still decayed and had to be extracted. Brushing after every meal was unheard of in my house. As a youngster, I went days without brushing my teeth. My parents never once insisted that I brush my teeth.

I remember my surprise when I started grade school and saw that every one of the teachers still had most if not all of their natural teeth. Granted, they had fillings or sometimes badly stained teeth, but at least they were real teeth, not the perfect kind that I associated with dentures.

By the time I was ten years old, five of my permanent teeth were so rotten that oral surgeons had to remove them. When I started college, all of my teeth had been filled at least once. Based on what I had learned at home, I assumed that nearly everybody over the age of forty wore dentures, and I was well on my way to that fate.

In college, the relationship between dental health and social-class origins was even more obvious. From the first day, I marveled that so many faculty and students had “strong teeth.” Because many of my professors were over forty, I expected that most would wear dentures. I do not recall any who did.

The dental story continued in graduate school. Although most of the school janitors, cafeteria cooks, and maintenance workers had missing teeth or dentures, few of the other M. A. and Ph.D. students or the faculty had visible fillings, and none had false teeth. Some even had “movie star teeth.” Among students and faculty, having “strong teeth” seemed as common as having attended strong elementary and secondary schools. Apparently, the same subtle advantages that provided access to schools with well-paid teachers and superior physical facilities also resulted in mouths with real, dazzling white, and perfectly straight teeth.

After I became a professor, I overheard some colleagues talking about Nell, the movie starring Jodie Foster, so I watched it. It was about a twenty-something woman who was a “wild child,” much like the lead character in François Truffaut's film of that name. Nell lived alone in a cabin in very rural North Carolina and, evidently, spent her entire life beyond the benefits of civilization. When Nell first appears partway through the movie and opens her mouth in a close-up, you see that she has movie star teeth. Despite a lifetime living away from modern amenities, Nell has radiant white teeth and no conspicuous dental problems. Laughable! Maybe she just had “strong teeth.” Talk about a movie blooper! It was like seeing a computer sitting on a rock in the movie One Million Years B.C. In all my college days, no professor, not even any of the self-proclaimed Marxists, ever mentioned the relationship between social-class origins and dental health. Maybe it was because they all had “strong teeth.” But when you grow up seeing so many people with “weak teeth,” you notice these things.

Lesson 4: I wish I had known that college is not just for “smart people.”

As a youngster, I had assumed that a degree was well beyond my capabilities. I knew that if I went to college, I would flunk out in the first semester. After all, nobody in my family or neighborhood had finished college, so what were my chances? Moreover, between back surgery and flunking first grade, I started college two years behind my high school cohorts. This gave many of them sufficient lead time to quit or flunk out of college before I even started. This group included a woman who had ranked in the top twenty of our class. These facts, combined with my mediocre high school grades, made me believe that my days in higher education would be numbered. Unlike my peers from high-SES backgrounds, I had gained neither the social nor the intellectual skills necessary for academic and professional success. So like many students from poor and working-class families who fear academic failure, I spent most of my first semester wondering where I would be working come January after receiving my first-term grades.

I had rarely studied in high school, other than a short while the night before a test. I took these study habits to college. Not surprisingly, I did not do well during the early part of my first term, and because my parents had never attended college, I couldn't ask them for advice on how to do better. I had to figure it out on my own. Near the end of the semester, I tried studying several days before each test. I started getting A's and B's. Still, I feared that I had found religion too late for salvation.

Because my college, like most others, only distributed report cards after each term, I had no idea what grades to expect. I still assumed that I would flunk out. My academic survival hinged on the salvage work that I had done in the last part of that first term. I was astonished when I opened my grades that cold January morning. I did not get my report card until I went to school for second-term registration, meaning that if I had flunked out, the news would have traveled quickly because I would have not been allowed to register. I would have had to leave the building and walk past all the students standing outdoors in line, waiting to enroll. My first-term grades were two B's and three C's—to me, the equivalent of being on the “Nobel Prize Honor Roll.” Although I did not know it then, my newfound study habits would help me make the dean's list every semester after my first year. I barely missed making the list in the second term of my first year. My GPA was 3.22, just 0.03 below the threshold. In my graduate school classes, I got one B and the rest were A's.

I eventually learned that my undergraduate grades shocked others as well. In my junior year, a friend said that a relative of his (whom I will call Tom)—the son of a wealthy family in my hometown—had flunked out of college and was moving home. After helping him return his belongings to his room, his mother sat on the side of his bed and began crying. Tom asked her what was wrong, and she sobbed, “Oh Tom, I just don't understand. If Ken Oldfield can get through college, anyone can. What's wrong with you?!” Tom had been socialized in the ways necessary to succeed in college at all levels, both socially and academically. He, like his peers raised by well-educated and high-earning parents, was statistically more likely than I was to complete advanced and professional degrees. But To m never did finish college. First-generation poor and working class college students who laugh last …

Lesson 5: I wish I had known that higher education considers debate and argument integral to sound learning

In my hometown, when two working-class kids disagreed about something important, they began by speaking louder and louder until one of them backed down. If the matter remained unsettled (meaning that the physically weaker one had not relented), they started fist fighting. After settling the matter, they usually went several months before talking to each other again. Sometimes this silence lasted a lifetime.

In college, everything was upside down, for faculty and students alike. I was shocked to learn that you were expected to question other students, in class and out. In the best courses, the professors encouraged you to debate them.

During one of my first days on campus, I was sitting at a table in the student union beside two professors and some students. They were all hotly contesting some point. The students appeared to me to be juniors and seniors, and they were just as likely to disagree with one or both professors as they were with each other. I do not recall what they were debating, but I expected to see them fist fighting any second.

I left for class, and when I returned an hour later, I was amazed to see the same people still sitting at the table, warmly chatting about something altogether different, as if there had never been any disagreements. Obviously, there were no hard feelings. I later realized that if anything, these disputes make the contestants better friends. It is still hard for me to accept that sometimes students or faculty pick arguments just to test an idea.

Obviously, no college is free of backbiting and alienation, but first-generation poor and working-class college students should know beforehand that colleges and universities view disagreement as fundamental to quality learning. Exchanging loud words is not the last stage before a fistfight, as I always thought.

Lesson 6: I wish I had understood how the academy defines work

Until college, I never realized how much my social-class origins affected how I interpreted the word work. During my first few weeks on campus, I was amazed to see people who could earn a good living doing what professors do, especially given that they never produced anything practical such as haircuts, cars, or toasters. Moreover, all the professors wore formal clothing while on campus. They never went home smelling of work, as my family always did. Faculty could go straight from campus to a fancy restaurant and fit right in. I found this new culture—in which a day's work remained, in large part, invisible—alienating and even intimidating.

Not only did professors not have real bosses who watched over them, but they did not have to work summers and holidays. As a first-year student, I heard someone say that every so many years, professors could take off one semester at full pay. They called it a sabbatical, which the dictionary said is Hebrew for “rest.” When I read this, I thought, “Rest!? From what!?” After several semesters, I started thinking, “Maybe I should see about getting into this line of ‘work.’”

Even today, when I hear students or professors claim they are working, I am tempted to say, “You wanna see work!? I'll show you work! I'll take you to the greasy spoon my mother and grandmother worked in for at least eight hours a day, six days a week, flipping burgers and making French fries while standing on a cement floor. During summers, the kitchen temperature often exceeded 100 degrees. That's work!” The academy taught me why it is called “the working class.”

Finally, I deciphered that faculty say that working-class people have “jobs” but middle- and upper-class folks have “professions.” When I first noticed this distinction, I consulted a dictionary and found that amateur comes from the Latin word amare, meaning “to love.” An amateur does something for fun, such as playing a pickup game of basketball for grins. The dictionary also said that professional means paying people for what they do. Loretta Lynn should have called her autobiography Professional Coal Miner's Daughter.

In “The Quest for Equity:‘Class’ (Socioeconomic Status) in American Higher Education,” Bowen offers an especially telling summary of the relationship between SES origins and education. He writes, “It is the long-term, lasting effects of SES on both cognitive and non-cognitive skills (including motivation, attitudes, social skills, and ‘proper’ behavior) that … are the main determinants of differences in educational opportunity. Put another way, poor families have great difficulty investing sufficient resources to develop in their children in the time before high school graduation, the abilities and outlooks necessary to enable their children to attend college and graduate” (pp. 8–9). In short, just by being the son or daughter of high-SES parents, a child gains far more of the social and cultural capital needed to perform better in formal education at all levels.

Reform 1: Develop support systems for poor and working-class first-generation college students (FGCSs)

Most colleges and universities have specialty student organizations or research centers to address the needs of particular groups (for example, women, students of color, or GLBTQ students). Institutions should establish comparable facilities to meet the unique needs of poor and working-class individuals. These centers should help students acquire important cultural capital by showing them how to obtain financial assistance, how to locate and use campus resources, how to minimize costs (for example, by buying used instead of new textbooks or laptop computers), and how to secure reasonable housing. Center directors should organize special orientation meetings for all interested first-generation college students in order to address major challenges that newcomers face, such as selecting appropriate courses, developing effective study habits, taking tests, and writing term papers.

Each FGCS should be provided with both a peer and a faculty mentor, preferably ones who are or were FGCSs themselves. These mentors would help orient their student to the college experience and support the student's transition in the first year. In turn, as sophomores, FGCSs should be encouraged to be peer mentors for new incoming students. Special center advisors could handle issues unique to the junior and senior years, such as questions about résumé writing, standardized test preparation courses, and graduate and professional school admissions. Mentors and center advisors could identify students who need additional assistance. In the end, these centers would be money-saving ventures. By reducing the FGCS dropout rate by just a few percentage points, these facilities will pay for themselves. Providing these support systems is a productive first step toward assisting FGCSs. Another crucial task is altering the campus environment to address and reduce social-class discrimination.

Reform 2: Address classism

The preceding recommendation suggests ways to help FGCSs, particularly poor and working-class students, adjust to the culture of higher learning. It is equally important that we change the campus environment to be inclusive so that privileged students are encouraged to understand and appreciate the values reflected in poor and working-class students’ ways of life. Faculty and administrators must encourage all students to become multicultural in regard to class issues.

One way of facilitating class multiculturalism is by having faculty members introduce social-class concerns into all their courses. Middle- and upper-class students must be exposed to materials that tell them more about poor and working-class people, promoting an under-standing of the countless hurdles that students from these backgrounds face while in the academy. A small sampling of possible texts includes Sherry Lee Linkon's Teaching Working Class, C. L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law's This Fine Place So Far from Home, Betty Hart and Todd Risley's Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, and Mike Rose's The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker. The centers that I described earlier could maintain databases of resources for faculty and student use.

Faculty should not confine their socioeconomic instructional efforts to studying the generic consequences of class. Students should be encouraged to research how SES plays out on their campus. They might, for example, compare the social-class origins of (1) fraternity and sorority members versus nonmembers; (2) professors versus campus service workers (for exam ple, janitors, cafeteria cooks); or (3) in-state versus out- of-state students. These hands-on studies could be especially effective in fostering students’ appreciation of the long-term consequences of widely divergent socio-economic backgrounds.

Finally, because professors are products of the sys-tem they are trying to transform, shifting the campus environment to include more social-class concerns will be as educational for many of them as it is for their students. Faculty members gain the highest return on investment when their intellectual travels take them far beyond their comfort zone, something the recommended reforms would surely do. Addressing classism requires changing faculty perspectives; it also requires changing the makeup of the faculty.

Reform 3: Diversify the social-class origins of the faculty

Bringing more diverse faculty perspectives to a campus enhances its learning environment. A similar rationale has been used to justify changing the race and gender composition of the faculty of an institution. Schools should expand their job notices to include wording that encourages persons from poor and working-class origins to apply. A background questionnaire that surveys socioeconomic origins should be included with all applications. All job applicants of humble origins should receive special attention in the selection process.

Nothing reconfigures the professoriate's assumptions about merit more than asking them to reinterpret the concept in a quest for greater faculty diversity. Paul Light shows in his article “‘Not Like Us’: Removing the Barriers to Recruiting Minority Faculty” that this new view of personnel selection need not come at the expense of quality. Considering social class in faculty hiring can reduce classist assumptions on the part of faculty and staff, bring diverse perspectives to campus, and support all students’ success.

Reform 4: Diversify the social-class origins of the student body

A primary reason for recruiting more students of humble origins to enter higher education is to improve the learning environment by bringing a more diverse collection of opinions and experiences to campuses. All institutions should collect and maintain information on their students’ socioeco-nomic backgrounds. Review committees should weigh information on social-class origin when deciding on admissions. Carnevale and Rose suggest that we view merit as a fluid concept:“While all striving has merit, striving against physical, social, economic, and cultural barriers is regarded as especially meritorious. In American culture, merit is measured not only by where one stands, but also by how far one had to go to get there. Americans are still willing to give special breaks to people who show ‘the right stuff’ in overcoming barriers” (p. 6). Considering social class in admissions could ensure a strong contingent of poor and working-class FGCSs in the classroom, a critical mass that would help these students feel comfortable on campus and that would improve the quality of the learning environment for all students.