The Changing Working Class

In the old progressive narrative of American culture, everyone would do better over time. The son of a miner with an 8^th grade education would graduate from high school, and even if he got an industrial job, stronger unions and general prosperity would mean that he worked fewer hours than his father and earned enough to buy a small house.  His daughter would go to college and get a job as a nurse or a teacher, and her kids might keep moving up by attending a better college and getting a better  job. And surrounding the generations of this one imaginary family would be most other families, so that over time, the whole country would experience increasing prosperity and higher social status.  Maybe everyone wasn’t going to make it to the middle class, but most people would get there.  (Of course, there’s a troubling counterpart to this narrative that blames those who didn’t become middle class for failing, but that’s another story.)

But something, actually many things, went wrong over the past few decades.  I’ve written before about the growth of income inequality, citing Timothy Noah’s analysis that describes it as a long-term trend with multiple contributing factors.  Perhaps because of income inequality, surveys suggest that Americans no longer expect their families to keep moving on up.  So despite the expectation that we would all become middle class, the working-class is not simply a majority, it is a growing majority.   That’s true according to the analyses of academics like Michael Zweig, who describes most Americans as working class on the basis of the limited power they have in the workplace. In the 2011 edition of his book America’s Working Class Majority, Zweig finds  that 63% of Americans are working class, up from 62% in the original 2000 book.  It’s also true in terms of how people identify themselves.  While the General Social Survey for decades has  shown that over 40% of Americans identify themselves as working class, the 2010 version of the survey, which the GSS reruns every few years, show that 46.8% now identify as working class, the highest percentage since the early 80s.

The working class is also changing.  The term used to call to mind blue-collar unionized workers with no college education, but today’s working class not only works in a wide range of jobs, but many have at least some college.  These days, many people with college degrees settle for jobs that don’t require the credential, and others whose jobs do require degrees have lost the professional autonomy that, according to Zweig, defines middle-class jobs.  Indeed, one of the reasons Zweig sees the working class growing is because so many teachers and nurses are now, on the basis of the limited control they have over their own labor, working class.  Many people go to college because it seems like the most promising path to economic security, but that promise fades when they can’t find jobs and are burdened by loans.  Combine that with an economic crisis and long-term shifts in employment that leave increasing numbers with precarious work, as John Russo noted recently, and it’s clear not only that more people belong to the working class but that the working class itself is becoming more educated and less-steadily-employed.

There’s another likely change in the American working class, one that reflects the broader shift in racial demographics.  The Congressional Research Service documents a slight decline in the percentage of Americans who self-identify as white, a slight increase in those who self-identify as Black, and more significant increases in those who identify themselves as Asian or Hispanic, and its study projects these trends to continue over time. Even if we looked only at population numbers, the working class – which was never really “all white” — is almost certainly becoming even more diverse.

The racial diversity of the working class is also likely increasing because of patterns in education and income.  While Blacks are more likely to get some college than are whites, whites earn more bachelor and advanced degrees, and whites with BAs earn about $10,000 a year more than Blacks with similar degrees.  Hispanics are less likely to either go to college or earn a degree than either Blacks or Whites, though when they do, they earn more than Blacks.  Beyond reminding us that racial differences still matter in education and earnings, these figures suggest that Hispanics and Blacks may be more likely than whites to remain in the working class even if they go to college.

Diversity isn’t only about race, of course.  A number of sources, including the Public Religion Research Institute, suggest that working-class political attitudes differ by gender, by region, by religion, and by situation, among other things.  They note, for example, that the white working class was at least somewhat divided along gender lines in this year’s election and that white Protestants were more likely to support Romney than were white Catholics. Their survey also found that voters who had been on food stamps were more likely to support Obama in this election, while those who had not received such assistance were more likely to support Romney.

So what does all of this add up to?  On the one hand, if the working class is growing, it ought to have more clout, as voters and as activists.  We may well be seeing a difference in elections, but there’s a big difference between people leaning just enough toward the Democrats to re-elect Obama and having a strong or coherent political voice.  The gap between functioning as an electoral block and developing a working-class consciousness that would fire coherent activism may be even larger. While the Occupy Movement stood up (and sometimes laid down) for economic justice, it’s unclear what role working-class people or working-class perspectives played in that movement.

The diversity of the working class, in all forms, may present a challenge to working-class organizing.  This has always been the case, of course, and the history of the labor movement reminds us of how difficult it can be to create unity among a diverse working class.  Today’s workplaces no longer provide as many opportunities for workers to come together or recognize their shared interests, and in a tight economy, working-class people sometimes see each other as the competition.  Given those challenges and the way working-class perspectives are also always shaped by race, gender, religion, and place, it’s hard to imagine a widespread, sustained working-class movement for economic and social change, even though it is so clearly needed.

On the other hand, social movements are not the only agents of change. Simply paying attention to the way the working class is changing and growing makes a difference, since it requires us to think about how social class is not a fixed structure but one that responds to other social and economic changes.  That matters for academics but also for civic life.  Being aware of the growing presence and diversity of the working class might make the media, educators, policy-makers, and yes, even politicians, more attentive to the importance of including working-class perspectives in public discourse and policymaking.

Sherry Linkon

Vandals in a Steel City School District

If you weren’t sure, let me remind you, Pittsburgh is a 21^st century city that still has a rusty, bricked out, working-class soul. I know this because I live here, but also because I finally saw the agit-prop-weepy that is Won’t Back Down, a film about a charter school take-over of a failing school in Pittsburgh’s impoverished Hill District using a special kind of law that we don’t have here in Pennsylvania (yet—and hopefully we never will) called the “parent trigger” law.

In Won’t Back Down, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Fitzpatrick, a working-class single mom of a 3^rd grade girl with dyslexia. Jamie works two jobs—at a car dealership by day and at a bar by night. Jamie is earnest, irrepressible, and hot. You see a lot of Jamie’s flat midriff and perky cleavage, even when she is delivering lines that could have been written by Sarah Palin: “You know those mothers who lift one-ton trucks off their babies? They are nothing compared to me.”

The truck that is crushing Jamie’s daughter Malia is a bad teacher at a school that has been failing for 19 years, Adams Elementary. The bad teacher is a stout middle-aged white lady who shops for shoes online and fiddles with her iPhone while Malia is getting roughed up and ridiculed in the classroom. The bad teacher is, of course, a union stalwart and has been “tenurized.”

When Jamie realizes how bad it is at Adams she tries (and fails) to secure one of three slots at the awesome new Rosa Parks charter school. Then she tries (and fails) to negotiate installment payments with a local Catholic school. Then she tries (and fails) to get Malia into a different classroom at Adams, one taught by Viola Davis’s character, Nona Alberts, the self-described “first black Stepford wife” who is going through a wrenching divorce. Nona is almost as checked out as the bad white teacher, but Jamie sees a spark in Nona’s dead eyes and begs her to help her take over the school using the parent trigger law (referred to as a “fail safe” law in the film).

In real life no group of parents has (yet) successfully used this law, but that doesn’t stop Jamie and Nona.  The next thing we know, they are knocking on doors and getting parents to sign petitions.  They get teachers to sign as well, which is tricky, because if the parent trigger law goes into effect, the teachers will forfeit their union membership at the resulting charter school. Jamie’s new boyfriend, who teaches music at her daughter’s school, argues in favor of his union, explaining that teachers need to be protected against low wages and preferential treatment. In another scene, one of the union officials (played by Ned Eisenberg) points out that teachers’ unions are under attack, and that parent trigger laws are aimed straight at organizations like the AFT. He is right, but unfortunately, Won’t Back Down is part of that attack.

The movie shows that pulling the parent trigger is pretty hard. Jamie and Nona have to get 51% of the parents Adams elementary (400+) to sign waiver forms. This takes hours of door knocking in the graffiti slathered tenements of Pittsburgh’s Hill District. It also takes a widely publicized and well-attended rally, which, as one blogger has pointed out, probably cost more than $3,000 to mount. They have to persuade a reluctant school board to hear the case, and, then, they have to get the school board to vote for their scheme.

After the school board vote (SPOILER ALERT) the film has an impossibly happy ending, in which Malia can miraculously read, and the new charter school (though no one ever utters that word) is filled with rainbows, streamers, butterflies, and song.

Won’t Back Down is not your garden variety Hollywood feel-good edu-flick. It was produced by 20^th Century Fox in conjunction with Walden Media, which also produced the controversial union-bashing Waiting for Superman and is bankrolled by gajilloinaire Phillip Anschutz. In addition to funding challenges to climate change and evolution science, over the last 10 years Anschutz has donated at least $210,000 to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, dedicated to the eradication of unions. The fact that Won’t Back Down had the least profitable opening ever for a film that opened in 2,500 theaters is, at least, some comfort.

Won’t Back Down is relevant to us those of us in Working-Class Studies because its producers are part of a movement to privatize, corporatize, and monetize public education. I have been watching this movement storm into Pennsylvania over the last few years under the cover of governor Tom Corbett, whose campaign was bankrolled by an entourage of for-profit charter school financiers, and PA’s Republican/ALEC controlled state legislature.

Won’t Back Down doesn’t ask the question that many of us have been raising:  do charter schools improve education? Here in Pennsylvania, Corbett’s administration has been giving charter schools a pass, making it easier for them to meet federal standards, even though a recent Stanford CREDO survey found that “[c]harter schools…in Pennsylvania on average perform worse than traditional public schools…”

So why do charters appeal to poor and working-class parents—especially in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh? As one Philadelphia blogger argues, charters use false advertising to trumpet the benefits of charters schools for inner city children; they “discriminate by playing by their own rules,” such as “counseling out” children with learning difficulties or behavioral problems; and charter school drain money, great students, and highly involved parents from the public schools.

In recent years public schools, public school teachers, and teacher unions have been under constant assault. The rhetoric of failure is rampant, though some argue that it is No Child Left Behind that has failed, and not the schools or the teachers themselves. In a recent poll, for example, three quarters of Americans report being satisfied with their own child’s school, but rate public education in general below 50%.

Are schools failing our children? Or are we failing our schools? In the last two years Corbett has cut more than a billion dollars from the Pennsylvania education budget, forcing hundreds of high performing schools to cut or end art, music, band, and, in the case of my own children’s school, science. Thousands of us in PA have been fighting back. One especially active parent, Susan Spicka, is running for the state legislature, while others have been rallying, pressuring our reps, calling out the governor, and fundraising like crazy in our own schools.

Through these actions, I have been reminded that we already have a kind of parent trigger law. It’s called democracy. Organizing on behalf of public education is as hard as trying to get 400+ parents to sign a parent trigger waiver—and most days, even harder. If you want to see what it looks like in Pittsburgh, check out Yinzercation, an education blog that puts the Pittsburgh fight in the context of the larger state and national issues. Our fight is about protecting public schools and strengthening communities. As Garrison Keiler has argued, “when you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

Won’t Back Down is a rallying cry for the foes of public education—the vandals—and they had better be warned that our public schools are not for sale. I am going to keep fighting for public schools because it is the right thing to do: for my children—and for all of the children for whom public education is still a vital civil right.

Kathy M. Newman

Education, Jobs, and Wages

Most people are surprised when I tell them that only about 30% of Americans over the age of 25 have bachelor’s degrees.  This is especially true of professional middle-class folks who went to high schools where almost everybody went to college immediately after graduation and whose friends now are almost all college graduates.  But it’s also true of people from working-class and poor backgrounds, who seem to think they are “abnormal” or “below average” because they haven’t graduated from college.  They’re not.  They are, in fact, the ones who are “typical.”

It’s even more surprising, however, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that in 2010 only 20% of jobs required a bachelor’s degree, whereas 26% of jobs did not even require a high school diploma, and another 43% required only a high school diploma or equivalent.  And according to the BLS, this isn’t going to change much by 2020, since the overwhelming majority of jobs by then will still require only a high school diploma or less.  What’s more, nearly 3/4ths of “job openings due to growth and replacement needs” over the next 10 years will pay a median wage of less than $35,000 a year, with nearly 30% paying a median of about $20,000 a year (in 2010 dollars).

Put these two sets of numbers together, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Americans are over educated for the jobs that we have and are going to have.  It’s hard to imagine why anybody would call us “a knowledge economy.”   It’s also hard to see how “in the 21^st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a first-class education,” as President Obama famously said in his 2010 State of the Union Address.

I don’t want to say that these statistics on education and jobs expose widely held “myths,” because that word suggests things that are utterly and completely false.  It’s much more complicated than that.  Rather, I’d say that broadly speaking, about one-third of Americans live in one world, while another two-thirds live in a rather different one, but that public discourse – in the mainstream media, for sure, but even more so in elite media and the academy – is conducted by the one-third who are college-educated and have jobs with a fair amount of autonomy and/or a decent income.  This one-third mistakenly takes our world to be typical – or said another way, the educated middle class tends to mistake our part of America for the whole.  And the larger working-class and poor part does not have enough power or voice to consistently make their presence known to us.  That means we are subject to certain uncorrected illusions – mistaking half-truths and quarter-truths for the whole truth — even though we’re the ones who collect and analyze the data.

There is, for example, a large and growing “knowledge economy” in the U.S., requiring more than 6 million people with master’s or doctoral degrees now, with another 1.3 million needed by 2020.  But even with this faster-than-average growth rate, it will be less than 5% of the overall economy.   Even if we expand the definition to include jobs requiring any education beyond high school, the “knowledge economy” – now and a decade from now –will still represent less than one-third of all available jobs.  This is a lot of jobs, about 44 million now, and if you work and live in this one-third, especially in its upper reaches, more education can seem like the answer to everything.  Indeed, according to the BLS, having a bachelor’s degree should yield a person nearly $30,000 a year more in wages than a high school graduate.

But most of the American economy is not like this.  The BLS’s three largest occupational categories by themselves accounted for more than one-third of the workforce in 2010 (49 million jobs), and they will make an outsized contribution to the new jobs projected for 2020.  They are:

• Office and administrative support occupations (median wage of $30,710)
• Sales and related occupations ($24,370)
• Food preparation and serving occupations ($18,770)

Other occupations projected to provide the largest number of new jobs in the next decade include child care workers ($19,300), personal care aides ($19,640), home health aides ($20,560), janitors and cleaners ($22,210), teacher assistants ($23,220), non-construction laborers ($23,460), security guards ($23,920), and construction laborers ($29,280).

There are still construction, mining, production, and transportation and material-moving jobs that provide annual incomes north of $40,000 (especially if they are union).  But even though all these occupations are projected to grow, some by above-average rates, in 2020 there will be fewer of them than there were in 2006 before the Great Recession, 2.3 million fewer according to the BLS.

The BLS produces its job-projection report every two years, and as I pointed out two years ago, it is consistently misreported in the mainstream media or (as this year) ignored all together.  This is partly because the just-the-facts BLS reporting style does not highlight the continuing growth of the low-wage economy.   But read it carefully – or just look at all the tables with an open mind – and I don’t think you can avoid two general conclusions:

• As an individual, get a bachelor’s degree or you are doomed to work hard for a wage that will not provide a decent standard of living for a family.  You may not get such a wage even with a bachelor’s degree, but without it your chances are slim and getting slimmer.
• But as a society, “the best anti-poverty program around” cannot possibly be “a first-class education” when more than 2/3rds of our jobs require nothing like that.  The best anti-poverty program around is higher wages for the jobs we actually have and will have.

If we were serious about eliminating poverty or restoring the credibility of the American Dream or simply respecting lifetimes of hard work, we would be debating how to raise wages directly – how to make it easier for workers to organize themselves into unions, how to get the federal minimum wage higher and on a steady inflation-adjusted escalator, whether to require some kind of workers council for all employers, and then legally require that the benefits of productivity growth be shared with workers.  We’d also be discussing how to use a more steeply progressive system of taxation to build a social wage that makes the basics of life – food, housing, mass transit, child care, education, and health care – cheaper for everyone, but most crucially for lower wage workers.

Those of us who have benefitted, financially and otherwise, from getting good educations should tell our stories and try to inspire others with the value of education in all its forms.  But we need to stop fostering illusions that good educations can ever substitute for the organized collective action – in politics, in the workplace, and in the streets – that will be required to reverse the increasingly miserable wages and conditions most people are facing now and in the future.

Jack Metzgar

Chicago Working-Class Studies

Teaching Unequal Childhoods

As an adjunct I teach two Working-Class Studies courses – one for adult union leaders and staff pursuing a master’s degree and another for (mostly) traditional-aged undergraduate students.   In both classes I use Annette Lareau’s wonderful study of how child-rearing practices vary by class, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life.  It’s a great text for parents, but also for anybody who’s ever had child-rearing done to them!

It’s one of those sociological studies where the researcher hangs around a family at home and on the road, taking careful notes about what everybody says and does.  Most of the book consists of case studies of the various middle-class, working-class, and poor families Lareau (and her research assistants) hung out with in an unnamed northeastern city, probably Philadelphia.

It’s not a book students necessarily love and, in fact, some really hate it, but everybody reads it, gets engaged, and comes to class ready to talk about it – including often intimate details about how they were reared and, for those who are parents, how they are rearing or did rear their children.  It’s a high-stakes topic, as everybody realizes that who they are and how they are is strongly influenced by how they were raised – and, of course, even the most exemplary parents easily slip into guilt-trips or defensive bragging about their kids, often in the same sentence.

I’m not going to summarize Lareau’s various findings, except to say that she finds a categorical difference between middle-class and working class child-rearing approaches, and relatively small (though not unimportant) differences between blacks and whites of the same class or between working-class and poor families.  Her first two case studies, of 4^th-graders Garrett Tallinger and Tyrec Taylor, present strongly positive examples of each of the categories.

Garrett has two very dedicated parents with professional jobs who are highly engaged with their children, with lots of challenging dialogue and with a demanding schedule of activities their three children enjoy but which are also educational in one way or another.  This concerted cultivation, Lareau says, is characteristic of a middle-class child-centered approach.  Tyrec has loving, though separated, working-class parents who see their parental duties as providing food, shelter, and moral guidance but otherwise leaving their children free to find their own way in life through natural growth.   Whereas Garrett spends little time outside of adult-structured activities with children exactly his own age, Tyrec is much more free “to make his own fun” with children of different ages, both within a large extended family and in his neighborhood, and mostly outside direct supervision by adults.

After students read the first 103 pages, including these two case studies, the very first questions I ask are:

• Which child-rearing approach makes for a happier childhood?
• And which child-rearing approach better prepares children to succeed as adults?

I’ve done this with four classes now (two each with adults and late adolescents), and with very few exceptions, students answer as if it were obvious: The working-class way makes for a happier childhood, but the middle-class way better prepares children to be successful adults.

Eventually, the personally high-stakes part of our conversations turns everybody toward Aristotle’s golden mean, resolving to mix a little bit of happiness with a little more adult-prep.  But there is also a recognition of what a tragic situation this is: What kind of society requires us to sacrifice the creative spontaneous joys of childhood so that we can “succeed” as adults?

From there everybody has a different take on nearly everything – including whether it’s such a good idea to “succeed” as adults.  Many do not fit neatly into Lareau’s categories, but an amazing number do.  Adult students who are parents and even some of the traditional-aged students engage in richly dialectical reflections on their parents’ approach and their own.  Many more students in both teaching venues come from working-class backgrounds than middle-class ones, but precisely because the topic is so high stakes, students (who can often be quite harsh in disagreeing with each other) are especially tactful, polite, even delicate with one another.  In general, though Lareau is rigorously and refreshingly neutral on which class culture is better, both kinds of students tend to favor the working-class way.

Lareau’s broader thesis is that schools are excessively and unconsciously middle-class institutions that assume that working-class kids (and parents) arrive not with a different culture, which has its strengths as well as weaknesses, but with cultural deficits that must be filled in and bad habits that must be broken.  This not only puts working-class kids at a disadvantage, but often leads to a conflicted and adversarial relation of both parents and kids toward teachers and, even more so, toward the institution of “the school.”  Among other things, she counsels greater class-cultural awareness by teachers, including learning and teaching how to “code-switch.”

The basically opposite child-rearing approaches are readily recognizable in people’s real-life experience. More contestable is whether they neatly coincide with class positions and whether race and poverty play as small a role as Lareau claims.  These, of course, are issues that make Unequal Childhoods a great text for teaching Working-Class Studies.  More important, however, is how her richly reported case studies personalize class issues and dynamics, allowing both adult and traditional-aged students to see how class plays a role not just in society at large, but also in our own immediate experience, including our hearts and minds.

Jack Metzgar, Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies

Anger Management, Anyone?

Compared to the US, Britain is generally regarded as having more rigid, tightly enforced, and widely understood social class barriers. With its well-known scene of blindfolded children moving on a conveyor belt toward becoming ingredients in a social sausage, the movie The Wall (and music: Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)) asserts the salience of class for British education. It does so via the refrain (presumably addressed to all teachers, not just the sarcastic one depicted in the video): “All in all, you’re just another brick in the Wall.” The film highlights how people  experience class during ordinary interactions in school and  thus offers a sharp reminder of the relationship between class and anger in education.

I once invited a group of aspiring American teachers to (re-)view and comment on the significance of the “The Wall” in relation to their own potential careers. While these largely middle-class undergraduates understood the anger expressed in the video and found it amusing, they didn’t see its relevance to their experience as students and the experiences they anticipated they might have as teachers. Why did my largely middle-class students respond to the video differently than I had anticipated?

In their 1986 study of anger (and anger management) in American history, social historian Peter Stearns and psychiatrist Carol Stearns assert that changes over time in the aims and methods of emotional control “help explain class relations in American society, particularly in the twentieth century.” After World War II, they say, the job of guidance counselors emerged in schools. The task was to reduce the number of “adjustment problems,” including angry students. By the 1950s, survey responses suggested that teenagers were intolerant of expressions of anger by peers, preferring instead a “cool” stance. Beginning in the 1960s, another aspect of anger in school was partially managed in a different way: as grade averages trended upward, angry student-teacher confrontations became less likely.

Despite the muted expression of anger, the classroom remains what social psychologist Bernard Weiner calls a microcosm of the social universe, a courtroom where we render and receive moral judgment.  When people feel negatively judged, anger is a likely response and students/faculty of working-class origin are likely targets of negative moral judgment. As British sociologist Andrew Sayer puts it in The Moral Significance of Class, “the working classes are both imagined or expected to be able to compete on equal terms with others and [at the same time] expected to fail.”

How can these two expectations go together? It is widely believed that the US is a meritocratic society: where we end up, most people think, is based (mostly) on individual merit. In other words, we get what we deserve. If so, how do we account for “failure”? The availability of a free public education means that educational (and occupational) achievement must be attributed to personal characteristics. In other words, we deserve what we get.

There is, however, abundant evidence that education in the US is less meritocratic than widely believed. After all, the teaching staff and management of educational institutions are largely informed by the perspectives of the (not always egalitarian) middle class.  Given that, what might a working-class person experience upon entering (or competing for entry to) a cathedral of learning? Class contempt.

Class contempt, according to Sayer, consists of negative judgments often based on taste and style that “[spill over] into judgments of moral worth.” Social class is “given off” by cues of accent, language, demeanor, possessions, and lifestyle and differences indicated via these cues can trigger the expression of class contempt (in either direction). Perhaps it was for this reason that Pierre Bourdieu described the belief that we can escape our social origins (by merit or other means) as a “dream of social flying, a desperate effort to defy the gravity of the social field.”

Even at its mildest, Sayer suggests, class contempt can significantly constrain the life chances of those who experience it. Expressions of class contempt (sometimes even by those who study the working class) need not be deliberate, and those who are the targets of it need not even be aware that contempt is being expressed.

The link between class contempt and anger is not necessarily direct: anger, as an effect of class contempt, can be mediated by shame. Shame, according to Sayer, “is commonly a response to the real or imagined contempt, derision or avoidance of real or imagined others, particularly those whose values are respected.” Consider the following example.

A working-class student in the last year of middle-school had very high achievement scores and difficulty behaving “appropriately” in classes. The student had independently read about the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and asked a favorite teacher (who knows the student extremely well and teaches History) for the recommendation required to enroll in an advanced course in Ancient History the following year. The teacher replies he cannot write a recommendation because the student may misbehave, thus reflecting poorly on the teacher. The teacher later confides to a colleague that he did not want the student to experience disappointment. During the remainder of the middle-school year, the student experienced shame; the following year, the student experienced anger, declaring “they care more about my behavior than whether I can think.” Angry in part over the denial of that dream of scholastic upward mobility, the student left school at age sixteen. Does this story depict class contempt or simply the negative evaluation of a student who happened to be of working-class origin? This complex question is difficult to answer. We can see class contempt more easily in an evaluation task completed in the late 90s by another group of aspiring teachers. I gave the students a list of ten hypothetical candidates for selection into a hypothetical high school advanced placement (AP) course that only had two openings. I asked them to rank order the candidates. The candidates varied by last name, gender, grade point average, test scores, number of days absent or truant, and parent occupation. The results were more or less as I expected:  the candidate with the highest test scores, a number of truancies, and a parent employed as a non-professional was ranked the lowest, while the candidates with Anglo-Saxon sounding names and professionally employed parents were ranked the highest.

When I pointed out that the most able candidate (based on test scores) was being denied access, several students argued rather vociferously that the candidate had misbehaved and thus did not deserve the opportunity. When I pointed out that many students in my class may have benefitted from a similar ranking process in high school (many having been enrolled in programs for “the gifted”), several replied that they had deserved to be highly ranked, either because of individual merit or (when evidence of this might have been equivocal) by virtue of having “come from a good family.” These results, and – especially – the student justifications, suggest the operation of class contempt. The possibility that some of my former students are probably ranking actual candidates even now suggests the relevance of the ranking exercise and its outcomes to the contemporary educational scene.

Anger sparked by expressions of class contempt can lead to interpersonal struggle or social transformation. “The Wall” makes the expression of sarcasm by a teacher visible as an expression of class contempt. Only by seeing ordinary interactions in social as well psychological terms can we move from shame to an anger that may help ensure that the American Dream is achieved more on the basis of merit and less on basis of class, race, sex, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, or politics.

Roy Wilson

Roy Wilson has published in the areas of sociology, computing, and education and has worked in industry and academia in the roles of employee, consultant, teacher, and researcher.

Working-Class Knowledge and School Knowledge

A couple of hours after I posted a recent blog exploring whether college education is the best option for working-class students, our administrative assistant at the Center for Working-Class Studies came into my office, saying she wanted to talk with me about it.  She raised a question I hear often from students at this largely working-class university: why do they have to take so many general education courses that don’t seem to have anything to do with their future careers?  Patty’s daughter is a college freshman, and like many, she’s frustrated with having to take courses that are not related to her major.  And as Patty pointed out, taking all those classes is expensive.

I gave my standard answer, one that reflects a widespread agreement, especially among liberal arts faculty: getting a broad education prepares you to be an active, critical member of society, someone who can adapt to new situations, understand the complexities of social debates, and make wise decisions about things like how to vote or how to respond to media messages.  As the American Association of Colleges and Universities explains it, this sort of liberal arts education provides multiple benefits to individuals and society:

Liberal Education . . . empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest. A liberal education helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings.

It’s this kind of general education that, to a great extent, defines the difference between most technical programs and a four-year college degree.  And it’s exactly what students who are pursuing B.A.s in very practical fields, like accounting or computer technology, sometimes question.

Patty and I talked for a while about her daughter’s experiences and the reasons why those liberal arts and general education courses might turn out to be useful, and then we both went back to work.  But the conversation kept nagging at me.  I had felt uncomfortable even as I offered my explanation, not because I don’t believe it.  I do.  I think that college courses on sociology, history, math, the basics of science, literature, philosophy, and so on help people learn to think better and provide an important foundation for citizenship as well as for navigating our complex world.

And yet, I couldn’t help but recognize the classism implied in my own explanation.  After all, school learning isn’t the only way of understanding how the world works.  Anyone who’s managed a household knows about interpersonal communication, social structures, and finance.  Anyone who’s worked for a large company understands the complexity of society and the ways that power can be distributed and deployed.  Those who work in the service sector, waiting tables or caring for young children, develop the ability to interpret social signals and navigate human relations.  Mike Rose has documented the intellectual knowledge of the working class persuasively in his terrific book, The Mind at Work.  The description of the book on his webpage reminds us of the nature of some of this knowledge, and why it matters:

The lightning-fast organization and mental calculations of the waitress; the complex spatial mathematics of the carpenter; the aesthetic and intellectual dexterity of the hair stylist—our failure to acknowledge or respect these qualities has undermined a large portion of America’s working population.

Nor is the gap between school learning and experiential knowledge absolute.  A number of for-profit universities grant credit for life experience, as do some accredited public institutions, especially those offering degrees online or for non-traditional students.  And many college faculty, myself included, incorporate experiential learning into our courses.  Experience is the best teacher is not just a cliché.

And yet, formal education does have much to offer.  It is at once intellectually broader and less immediately useful than education that focuses exclusively on preparing students for specific jobs.  In his most recent book, Why School?, Rose advocates for this view.  He writes,

I come from a working-class family, so I am certainly aware of the link between education and economic mobility. And as a citizen – and someone who has spent a lifetime in schools – I absolutely want to hold our institutions accountable. But I wrote Why School? to get us to consider how this economic focus, blended with the technology of large-scale assessment, can restrict our sense of what school ought to be about: the full sweep of growth and development for both individuals and for a pluralistic democracy. . . .  There’s not much public discussion of achievement that includes curiosity, reflectiveness, imagination, or a willingness to take a chance, to blunder. Consider how little we hear about intellect, aesthetics, joy, courage, creativity, civility, understanding.

Rose believes that the focus of contemporary education on students’ ability to “demonstrate on a particular kind of test a particular kind of knowledge” conflicts with American ideals about equality and citizenship. Equally important, he believes that parents, and presumably college students, also want more from education.

In today’s economy, as college tuition goes up, grants and other aid cover less of the costs, and the job market tightens, both students and parents – and yes, college faculty and administrators, as well – put increasing emphasis on the practical value of higher education, too often in ways that undermine its benefits.  Students rush through college, taking (and working) too many hours to have time for serious learning.  Curricula that focus too narrowly on job preparation leave graduates without one of the most important benefits of higher education: improved critical thinking and learning capabilities.  As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa argue in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the students who learned the least in college were those in the most career-oriented programs – business, education, social work, and communications.  And those are the very majors that many students choose because they want to be sure their college education leads to a better job.

All of which puts humanities professors like me – and especially those of us in working-class studies — in a quandary.  How do I advocate for the value of what I teach, most of which emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking rather than job skills (humanities students are among the least likely to find work related to their college degrees), without denigrating the working-class knowledge that I also value?  How can I best articulate the value of  academic knowledge about the power structures and cultural forms that shape our diverse society (and reinforce its inequities) and developing the ability to navigate across social class divides while also encouraging students to value their own working-class culture and lived experience?

Every year, the Working-Class Studies Association conference includes multiple sessions addressing these and related questions.  We talk endlessly about the contradiction between valuing working-class culture and helping our students develop the cultural capital, skills, and credentials to leave the working class.  Despite all this talk, we haven’t reached many definite conclusions.  But I take heart in the ongoing conversation.  We may not be able to elide the contradictions of our work, but we are taking them seriously and talking together, across classes and situations, among faculty and students, in order to figure it out.  That may be the best we can do.

Sherry Linkon, Center for Working-Class Studies

How to Build a Strong Economy: Education or Unions?

On May 15, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that

The American higher-education system has long been seen as a leader in the world, but confidence in its future and its enduring value may be beginning to crack along economic lines, according to two major surveys of the American public and college presidents conducted this spring.

The surveys, conducted by The Pew Research Center and The Chronicle, reveal few surprises to those of us who have been paying attention to the latest crisis of higher education, but several points underscore the different views of the purpose of higher education among education professionals and between those with degrees and those who have not gone to college . For example, of the 1,055 presidents of colleges and universities across a broad spectrum, including four-year, two-year, public, private, and for-profit institutions, respondents are split roughly in half on whether colleges should be about work force preparation or “intellectual growth,” and the responses fall along a predictable axis, with four-year institutions arguing for the latter, and two-year and for-profits advocating the former.

Equally interesting is the difference between college graduates and those who have not (or have not yet) attended college in their responses to the same question on the mission of higher education. According to Pew, those who attended college more often believe that the mission of college is intellectual growth, while those who have not feel it should be work-force preparation. As significant are the responses, across all educational levels, to the question of what a young person needs to succeed in the world: a college education comes in third, behind a “strong work ethic” and the ability to get along with people..

The Chronicle survey addresses President Obama’s statement in last year’s State of the Union address of a national goal that the U.S would lead the world in degree attainment by 2020, so that we can lead the global workplace. The assumption that America will regain its competitive edge simply by awarding more college  degrees seems naïve, , particularly when the same respondents to the Chronicle survey report overall “lower quality” of preparation on the part of incoming students. Indeed, few of the college presidents surveyed think the goal is attainable: only three percent believe it is “likely” that the U.S. will achieve this benchmark, while 50 percent say it’s not likely.

Compounding the problem is that, even if this goal were achieved, a college degree is not a guarantee of gainful employment, though university marketers often suggest it is. Just last week, Catherine Rampell of the New York Times cited a study by Andrew Sum of Northeastern University that shows that only 55.6 percent of 2009 college graduates are working in jobs that require a college degree, while the other 44.4 percent are almost evenly split between working in jobs that require no degree and not working at all.  In the current economy, and as Sherry Linkon and Jack Metzgar have suggested in their analyses of predictions about job growth in the service sector, in the long run, college degrees are clearly not the answer for everyone.

Indeed, in his response to Obama’s aspiration, Brookings Institute fellow Grover J. ‘Russ” Whitehurst noted:

Germany has a stronger economy than France but half the percentage of young adults with a college degree.  Further, France has increased its percentage of young adults with college degrees by 13 percentage points in the last 10 years whereas Germany’s output of college graduates has hardly budged, yet the economic growth rate of Germany has exceeded that of France over this same period.  Obviously increasing educational attainment is not a magic bullet for economic growth.  Education credentials operate within boundaries and possibilities that are set by other characteristics of national economies.  We must attend to these if more education is to translate into more jobs.

And what are those “other characteristics” that might generate a stronger national economy? The answer is ironic, especially as governors in Ohio and Wisconsin are pushing anti-union bills through state legislatures. According to several studies, one of the conditions of strong economies like Germany’s is not increased degree attainment but strong unions and worker protections.

Marc McDonald suggests that when looking at two of the world’s nations with the lowest jobless rates, Germany and Japan, what emerges is a common factor of heavily unionized workforces:

Take a look at two of the most heavily unionized nations in the world: Germany and Japan. Both nations are thriving and have jobless rates far below the U.S. rate. Both nations still have large manufacturing sectors, which are heavily unionized. And both nations are exporting more than ever—even to low-wage nations like China. (Japan, for example, is one of the few nations on earth that has enjoyed a trade surplus with China much of the time in recent years)… Not only are Germany and Japan heavily unionized, both nations have strong pro-worker laws that back up their labor movements. In both nations, for example, it’s virtually impossible to fire full-time workers. Mass layoffs are very rare in both nations.

While many would balk at the suggestion that the U.S. emulate Japan, with its notorious reputation as a stressed out, all-work economy, McDonald notes that, on average, Japanese workers work fewer hours than their American counterparts and enjoy greater benefits. McDonald argues that because workers are protected within these economies, the companies that employ them must think beyond the immediate and develop long-term strategies, rather than short-sighted policies that focus solely on short-term growth and quick shareholder gains.

McDonald may be on to something in his suggestion that as corporations –  and increasingly universities — clamor for the “flexibility” that non-union and non-tenure workplaces promise, they may be embracing a short-sighted strategy. Writing in Harpers last year, Thomas Geoghegan, urges Americans to “Consider the Germans,” and in so doing he counters the claim that what American employers need is greater flexibility and fewer fetters that come with worker representation. In considering the ways that Germany continues to thrive in high-market manufacturing he notes:

All my life as a labor lawyer I have read the same thing in The Economist, about the United States and its wonderful labor-market flexibility. What they mean is: Unlike the Germans, U.S. working people are completely powerless. But it’s precisely because of our labor-market flexibility that we can’t compete. Our workers have been flexed right out of their high-wage, high-skill jobs and into low-wage, low-skill jobs. That’s bad for the workers, of course, and it’s also bad for the economy. The German model—with worker control built into the very structure of the firm—keeps bosses and workers in groups, rubbing elbows with each other, and sometimes just elbowing. It creates a group interaction that over time builds and protects what economists like to call human capital, especially in engineering and quality control. It’s precisely this kind of valuable capital that our atomizing “flexible” labor markets are so good at breaking up and dispersing.

Both McDonald and Geoghegan share the belief that while America obsesses (with good reason) over China, that the model to emulate is that of Germany, with its strong secondary education system and clear worker rights’ laws.

What’s the connection between the value of a college degree and the economic impact of unions?  Just this: if our goal as a nation is economic growth, then we might do better to focus on the rights and status of workers rather than on getting more people to go to college.

Tim Francisco, Center for Working-Class Studies

Should Working-Class People Go to College?

That sounds like an irreverent question.  It might even sound like I’m denigrating either working-class people or college.  So let me say this from the outset: I think higher education is important and valuable, and I am delighted that so many working-class students are pursuing it.  I also know that my view reflects just one part of the very divided public discourse about education these days.

I want people to go to college to develop their ability to think critically and analyze the world around them. As a humanist, I believe in the social, cultural, political, and personal value of spending time reading and talking about ideas.  Like Martha Nussbaum and Chris Hedges, I find the shift away from what I think of as “real” education – education for critical thinking and citizenship — not just philosophically problematic but downright scary for the future of this country and the world.  We need more people to be more able to read, speak, write, and most important think well.

Discussions about the value of the humanities and the broad social purposes of higher education represent just one part of the public debate.  The rest is about economic costs and benefits.  John Sherriff collates some of this material on his website exploring whether a college education is a “good investment.”  David Evans, a blogger and YouTube video producer, advises people not to go to college, suggesting that other types of training will yield equally-valuable career opportunities.  Others question the structure of higher education, suggesting that the four-year BA is itself a problematic model because few occupations really require that type of education.  Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute even suggests that the idea that everyone should get a BA creates class divides in America.

Two conversations I had last week have me thinking about these two very different discussions.   On Friday, I met with a student I’ll call Cherise, who was thinking about changing her major from English to English Education in order to improve her chances of getting a job, even though she admitted that she didn’t really want to work with children.  While I encouraged her to view college as an opportunity for learning and developing her abilities as a reader, writer, and thinker, I couldn’t ignore Cherise’s concern about getting a good job.  I told her about the panel we recently held with alumni from our department discussing their jobs as writers, editors, and professionals in marketing and public relations.  Studying literature, language, and writing can seem self-indulgent and impractical, but as one of my former students explained during the panel discussion, her English degree prepared her well for her job, teaching her how to adapt her writing to different situations, analyze both content and audiences, and figure out how to communicate effectively about technical issues she never studied in school.

The previous afternoon, I talked with a local group of current and retired teachers, and part of our conversation about class in America turned to the high costs and questionable economic payoffs of higher education.  I noted a point we have cited several times in Working-Class Perspectives over the last two years: the Bureau of Labor Statistics prediction that in the next two decades the U.S. will see more growth in jobs that don’t require a college degree and that pay low wages than in more professional fields.  We also talked about how the message that “everyone” should go to college discourages young people from even thinking about careers in skilled trades.

Worse, I pointed out, the myth that everyone needs a B.A. is creating long-term financial strains for many individuals and their families.  Last week, the New York Times reported that Americans now owe more for student loans than for credit cards, and the total debt load for college loans will soon be more than a trillion dollars.  Two-thirds of students now graduate with debt, and job prospects and security for college grads are both faltering.  According to Paul Krugman, as of December, about 74% of college graduates were finding full-time employment.  That’s a slight increase from the year before, but still 9% lower than a decade ago – when students were graduating with significantly less debt.  A dramatic report on 60 Minutes last fall highlighted the problem, as Scott Pelley talked with a roomful of people in the Silicon Valley who had reached the end of their 99 weeks of government unemployment benefits, unable to find work  despite having B.A.s (or graduate degrees) and years of experience.

College can still be a good investment, but it’s also increasingly expensive.  Costs have escalated as universities add facilities, keep technology up-to-date, and provide more services to address the needs of their increasingly diverse populations.  Meanwhile, despite plenty of rhetoric about the importance of education, most states are cutting funding to colleges and universities in order to balance tight budgets, choosing tax cuts for the well-off over education for the working class. As taxes go down, tuition goes up.  But for many working-class families, the tax cuts that created the states’ budget problems don’t come close to balancing the increased cost of college tuition.  Put simply, going to college takes an ever-bigger bite out of the family budgets of working-class people.  For them, going to college is a significant financial gamble.

That’s what makes the question of whether working-class people should go to college so difficult. Some healthy skepticism about the value of college is wise.  Young people and their parents should pay more attention to alternative forms of job preparation, such as technical schools and apprenticeships.  For someone whose primary goal is getting a better job, becoming an electrician may be a smart choice.

Critics like Murray overstate the cost-benefit analysis problem, though.  Yes, college can lead to significant debt, but only if students and their families ignore the opportunities available at regional universities and community colleges or get lured into high-cost for-profit programs that don’t yield real job opportunities.  Lower-cost options do exist.

The problem is, in part, that the more affordable state institutions are being pressured to offer programs that focus almost entirely on workplace skills, not critical thinking.  As CWCS faculty affiliates Tim Francisco and Alyssa Lenhoff have argued, “while students at the most prestigious schools are learning broad concepts and acquiring intellectual and ethical frameworks for processing complex, multiple, and shifting realities, too often students at lower ‘tier’ institutions are being trained to perform tasks, with one career or vocation the sole goal of their education. One group will likely become the innovators and the entrepreneurs, the other the workers.”

Along with reinforcing existing class divides, this approach ignores the broader social value of education.  Democracy relies on the ability of the people to think critically.  As Nussbaum writes, the abilities that are most “crucial to the health of any democracy” are being threatened in the current emphasis on the cost-benefit analysis of education.  This pits the pursuit of employment, a key part of the American dream, against the basic conditions for effective democracy, a key American value.

So what should I advise Cherise?  Her whole face lit up when I told her that sticking with the English major would not ruin her economic future.  It’s clear that what she really wants to do is keep reading, talking about, and critically analyzing literature and language.  And why shouldn’t she have the same opportunity to pursue her passions that her more privileged peers enjoy?  On the other hand, even as I can point to real professional opportunities for a smart young woman with good writing and research skills, I have to admit that there are no guarantees.  The best I can do is present her with the full range of options and obstacles.

Sherry Linkon, Center for Working-Class Studies

Expanding Inequality

In a series of articles in Slate this fall, Timothy Noah traced the growth of income inequality in America and identified several contributing factors: the decline of organized labor, the poor quality of K-12 education, and various government policies among others.  He reviewed the arguments of economists and policy analysts, and he considered – and rejected — claims that economic inequality doesn’t matter.  As British scholars Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue, economic inequality is bad for all of society, not just those who are struggling to survive on the bottom.  Nicholas D. Kristof summarized their argument in his column in yesterday’s New York Times:  “inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole.”

Inequality matters, in other words, and not only on moral grounds.  The productive functioning of our society, for everyone, rich and poor, depends on reducing the level of economic inequality.  But given recent trends in employment, education, and public policy, the income gap won’t decrease anytime soon.  In fact, it’s likely to get worse.  Here’s why.

First, as Jack Metzgar and I have both noted here in previous blogs, the working-class jobs of the present and future are, increasingly, low-wage service-sector jobs.  Moreover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we’re going to see more and more of those kinds of jobs.  Combine the growth of such jobs with the decline of the labor movement – the social institution that has, historically, contributed most to higher wages and better benefits for all workers, not just union members – and it’s easy to see how these emerging employment patterns will contribute to more inequality, not less.  Simply put, workers will earn less and have limited social or legal resources with which to advocate for better wages and benefits, much less better working conditions or fair treatment in the workplace.

As a society, we don’t seem worried about this emerging trend.  Perhaps we accept low wages because we believe that they make goods and services more affordable, or because we buy the claim that paying higher wages would cripple businesses.  We forget, though, that these advantages, to both consumers and employers, come at a cost in taxes. A California study found that Walmart workers cost the state $86 million a year in public assistance.   But the Ohio Legislature recently defeated a bill that would identify companies whose employees rely on public assistance, and supporters were accused of being anti-business.

We may also accept low wages because we believe that those who work in low-paying jobs deserve what they get. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, and we believe that anyone who tries hard enough should be able to get a good job.  After all, if you had been smart or hard-working enough, you’d have gone to college, which would give you access to a better-paying job, right?

While it’s true that getting a college degree correlates with higher lifetime earnings, and earning a degree does help individuals get ahead, economic inequality is a systemic problem, one that can’t be solved by increasing higher education alone. If most of the job growth over the next few decades is in low-wage jobs that don’t require higher education, then education won’t reduce economic inequality.

Education can even contribute to inequality.  The poor quality of K-12 education available to most poor and working-class students helps perpetuate inequality in this country. Too many schools simply don’t do a good enough job preparing these students for either employment or further education, much less to participate well in civic society or advocate for their interests.

Many working-class people who do seek college degrees or further training encounter two key problems: they get sucked into for-profit schools that leave them in debt, often without yielding good employment, or they enter the public higher education system, which is battling budget cuts and overcrowding.

For many working-class and poor students, the best educational option is community college, which offers training for the workplace at an affordable cost and helps prepare students to go on to four-year degrees.  If these schools could accommodate all of those students, they might improve their economic chances – though, again, that wouldn’t solve the underlying problem of too many jobs that pay too little. But community colleges across the country are facing budget cuts and having to turn away motivated students.

Which brings us to the next reason why economic inequality will grow over the next decades: government policies that provide less support for the poor and working class, including cuts to higher education.  According to a recent report in the Washington Post, community colleges in California alone have had to turn away 140,000 students because of budget cuts.  Even when space is available, cuts in state funding often yield tuition increases, making higher education less affordable for those who need it most.

Of course, this reflects economic trends: state budgets are in trouble.  That’s partially due to the struggling economy, and they’re losing federal support as the stimulus ends.  But they are also taking in less revenue because of tax cuts.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 46 states have cut taxes in recent years.  Taxpayers have pushed for lower taxes, and politicians tout them as a way of stimulating the economy by making states more “business friendly,” garnering votes along the way.  Never mind that it doesn’t work, according to economists Iris J. Lav and Robert Tannenwald.  It’s also a sleight of hand trick: we may pay less taxes as workers and citizens, but we make up the difference in what we pay for college tuition, as well fees on various state services (such as drivers’ licenses and car registrations).

And as Noah points out, income inequality has grown more during Republican administrations than during Democratic ones.  Why?  Because conservative policies favor the wealthy.   Noah notes, for example, that the real tax rate for the wealthiest Americans declined from 42.9% under Carter to just 4.3% under George W. Bush.  Republicans claim that putting more wealth at the disposal of business owners will generate more jobs and income increases for the rest of us, but in fact, most people’s incomes increase more slowly when Republicans run things than when Democrats are in charge.  Not surprisingly, the only people whose incomes increase at a faster rate under Republicans are those in the top 20% of income brackets.

Which suggests a final reason why we should expect more inequality in coming years:  the Republicans regained power in the November election – not full control, but enough to push through continuing tax cuts for the wealthy.  In several states, newly-elected Republican governors have pledged to “go after” public employees, hoping to reduce costs by laying off thousands of workers and cutting the wages and benefits of many others.  I doubt that most of those who voted for Republican candidates in November did so because they wanted to see economic inequality increase, but that seems to be where we’re headed.

Sherry Linkon, Center for Working-Class Studies

Education or Exploitation? For-profit schools and working-class students

If you read yesterday’s New York Times, you may have noticed the full-page ad, paid for by Corinthian Colleges, Inc., one of the largest for-profit education providers in the US.  The ad urged readers to contact our Congressional representatives to “put the brakes on” proposed regulations that link educational programs’ eligibility for federal financial aid with the post-graduation income and debt repayment of students.  The ad suggests that proposed new rules would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs and limit college access for low-income and minority students.

Responding to the proposed rules, Harry C. Alford, CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, argues that the Department of Education was “singling out one vitally important segment of the post-secondary landscape and putting up ‘no trespassing’ signs, keeping out the students who would benefit the most.”  While this rhetoric is appealing, the question of whether for-profit schools – which Alford describes as “career colleges” – serve the best interests of working-class students is not simple.

For-profit schools have thrived for several reasons.  First, they offer an alternative to traditional college programs.  States have cut funding to higher education, and in some cases – California   most dramatically – have limited enrollment.  Meanwhile, the most common advice given to those who are out of work is “get a college education.” So it’s no surprise that enrollments are up across the country.  For-profit programs provide alternatives to students who can’t get in to crowded colleges or programs with limited enrollments.

For-profit programs also provide flexible, often on-line programs that focus on job preparation.  They offer short-term certificates as well as degrees.  That flexibility helps working adults, and some traditional-age working-class students may well find alternative settings more comfortable and accommodating than traditional community colleges or four-year public universities.  The focus on training for specific jobs may appeal to the practical attitudes of many working-class students, as well.

Such schools often target lower-income students, and they both enroll and graduate higher percentages of minority students than do traditional colleges.  A study commissioned by Corinthian found (perhaps not surprisingly) that they offer a good value for working-class students: such schools “increase access and student success among first-generation, low-income, and non-traditional students better than two-year public colleges.”  In a report prepared for the Imagining America Foundation, an organization that provides scholarships for students attending for-profit “career colleges,” Watson Scott Swail claimed that career colleges achieved higher graduation rates than public or private institutions.  The National Center for Education Statistics disagrees.  Its 2008 report shows for-profit 6-year graduation rates at just 24.5%, compared with 55% of students at public institutions.

Faculty at some for-profit schools work hard to provide high-quality education.  But some of these schools encourage or even require faculty to use questionable methods or pitch course expectations low.  Several of my former graduate students have taught at a for-profit near Youngstown State.  They describe the “college prep English” courses there as centered on grammar drills and worksheets, while “college writing” focuses on the “five-paragraph essay,” a model widely discredited by experts in composition.  The curriculum is tightly prescribed and very different from what we teach in first-year writing courses offered to very similar students at our open-enrollment university.  The education at the for-profit is significantly less challenging and substantive than what students would get at the university.  Asking less may help raise graduation rates, but it cheats students.  One of my colleagues said that her students at the for-profit school believe they are getting the same quality education, in both substance and cultural value, as they would get at the university.

The Corinthian study claims that for-profits “do a better job in helping advance students, leading to higher wage gains upon employment and more manageable debt burden.”  Specifically, the report finds that students generally see a wage gain of about 54%, comparable to what they’d get with a community college degree.  Most for-profit schools promote their programs as good preparation for high-demand careers.  While defining college entirely in terms of job preparation is problematic, as Tim Francisco pointed out last week, it’s equally true that for many young adults, job training programs are a good fit. For some students, learning a skilled trade would be a better choice than a more academic program.  Despite the popular belief that “everyone” should go to college, some students who might struggle at four-year universities would thrive in practical training programs.  Further, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment categories that will see the most growth over the next few decades require either specialized training or none at all.  For those jobs that require some training – manicurists, for example, or licensed practical nurses — some for-profit training programs may be a fine option.

Yet, as we’ve discussed here before, many of those jobs pay very poorly.  The New York Times reported earlier this year that students often enroll in for-profit schools expecting to land high quality jobs, only to discover that being a line cook or a manicurist doesn’t pay very well.  Worse, tuition at most for-profit schools is significantly higher than at public institutions.  A Government Accounting Office report provided a case in point: “A student interested in a massage therapy certificate costing $14,000 at a for-profit college was told that the program was a good value. However the same certificate from a local community college cost $520.”  Students who either pay out of pocket or take out loans for $30,000 dollar degrees that lead to $22,000 a year jobs are right to feel resentful.

Meanwhile, for-profit schools claim that they do not receive taxpayer support, while both public and private non-profits rely on state and federal funds for operations and research.  Of course, students attending for-profits do receive support from taxpayers, in the form of loans and Pell grants, and their loan repayment rates are considerably worse than those of students attending non-profit schools.  According to an Education Department report, 43% of those who default on student loans attended for-profit schools, even though only 26% of borrowers attended such schools.  For-profits may not receive direct funding, but without government loan programs, many of their students could not attend college.  And many of those who attend such schools don’t earn enough to pay back their loans.

That imbalance lies at the heart of the “gainful employment” concept of the new regulations.  It asks schools to demonstrate that the cost of a program does not exceed a reasonable percentage of typical earnings for graduates and to show that graduates are paying off their student loans.  A program would be deemed ineligible for federal loans for students if less that 35% of graduates were successfully repaying loans.  That’s why for-profits and their allies are fuming, though as Inside Higher Ed points out, the new regulations are likely to make just 5% of for-profit programs ineligible for government loan programs.  About 55% would be restricted in some way.

Even worse, the GAO study found clear patterns of deception and pressure in recruiting, and admissions counselors at several schools encouraged applicants to lie on their government financial aid forms.  Undercover investigators applied to 15 for-profit schools around the country.  Every single program “made deceptive or otherwise questionable” claims.  At most schools, applicants were given inaccurate information about job placement rates, job openings, and potential earnings.  Some applicants were pressured to sign contracts without having a clear statement of program costs.  If for-profit education is so good, why do so many programs rely on high-pressure tactics and misrepresentation to recruit students?

No doubt, many working-class students benefit from alternatives to traditional 2- and 4-year college programs.  They may offer greater flexibility, programs focused on preparation for jobs that don’t require a traditional degree, or a focus on working-class and minority students. Some for-profit schools offer high-quality and affordable programs, provide students with accurate and smart advice about how to balance college debt with employment potential, and assist students in finding good job placements.  They provide a viable alternative for working-class or any other students.  If others can’t make a profit without misrepresentation and exploitation, they should be shut down.   I guess it’s pretty simple after all.

Sherry Linkon, Center for Working-Class Studies