With the Supreme Court’s decision to end race as a factor in college admissions, we see a robust, nationwide discussion growing about class in efforts to create diversity on college campuses. But how to measure class in discerning who should earn seats at coveted schools?
More opportunities and general fairness is what we’re after. A level playing field where students from a range of backgrounds, circumstances and ideologies, can share experiences and learn together. Classrooms filled with students from rural areas and sprawling urban cities, rough, impoverished neighborhoods and gated communities, and a veritable rainbow of races, ethnicities and religions is the best mix.
Here, students will learn the struggles, the fun, the annoyances from living around people who aren’t like them. Good practice for the real world. When they graduate, they’re more likely to be successful in working with, supervising and taking directions from all kinds of people – rich, poor, Black, white, Hispanic. Anyone. This is the best outcome in an education.
To have a better shot at getting in, socioeconomically disadvantaged students deserve a break. As the saying goes, talent exists everywhere; opportunity does not.
Significant emphasis must be on enrolling students who lacked resources for college-success foundations. Those coming from households with generational poverty, limited education and few books with parents holding multiple jobs, where the economy is lacking. Spread opportunities generously here.
Remember, too, a break is different from a favor. We’re talking about students who are high-performing, highly academically capable. They just need to get into good schools to show – and prove – their worth.
Besides criteria of household income and previous school conditions, a student’s spark, grit, creativity and perseverance are essential, too. What will she or he bring to a classroom of soon-to-be peers? Will moral qualities play into admission decisions? We can’t say. But successful students who add to the academic environment with extraordinary personal stories should be recruited.
To show one’s class on an application and meet the marks of a standout won’t be as easy to determine as race. Admissions committees have well-practiced antennae to identify promising students. Still, we see a steep learning curve ahead for admissions offices.
Also important is that once students are accepted, they actually stay. They’ll need more than pluck and stellar grades. For kids who grew up in chaotic family situations, college culture may be more difficult to decipher than their actual studies. And many of us learned how to study in college, not high school. Here’s where support, resources and counseling will be needed, especially at culturally foreign Ivy League schools.
Class considerations may reach down into the chasm between high school and college, too. How to provide new on-ramps for student success? District school boards and administrators, of course, want graduates to do well in whatever post-high school undertakings, but they aren’t scored on this. Graduation rates are noted, then tracking drops off.
Also, student debt is a huge consideration, especially for those from low-income families. So many become buried by debt. Financial literacy must be part of students’ education.
We hope there’s a silver lining in the high court’s decision. Ultimately, students deserve to be with people who are not like them. We hope more college and universities throw open doors, and campuses reflect the differences throughout the U.S.
We especially want to see students who just need that leg up, that opportunity to first be accepted, so they can go on to do great things.
