Is a University Degree still a Tool for Class Mobility?

I have been doing mid-term check-in meetings with my students in Theories of Feminisms. Today, I met with a lovely, smart young woman from a working class family in Baltimore. She works nearly full-time at a fast food restaurant in addition to going to school full-time. She is smart and working hard, though does not find all of her classes compelling. She worried that she was spending a lot of money to go to the University when she could go to a community college and get a degree that would lead more directly to a job. She worried about a future with student loans (though a pretty average amount for students at state universities). She worried that she did not fit in at our university, that she was not like the other students. Yet, she was not vulnerable; she was tough, determined. I wondered, what can I tell her that I know to be true?

First, we talked about the differences between community colleges and universities. I told her, community colleges offer more technical degrees, degrees that respond to employment needs in the local counties. I told her university degrees invite you to imagine the role of being a manager in the world of work, a path to white collar jobs. I told her none of this is guaranteed, but you are getting and education steer and ship and not be a cog in steerage. I told her, this is not to diminish the important work that your parents do, that many people do in the world, but this education might create a different kind of life for you.

I asked, what do you want to get out of your time here at the University? I asked her, what do you need to learn? She started to tell me about knowledge in her classes, and I said, no, what do you need to learn about the world? What do you envision for your life? What can you get from our University that will make your life meaningful? Important? That will help you be the person you want to be in the world? She said, yes, I have to figure out the answers to these questions.

I did not promise her, but I came close to promising her, that a degree from a University is a tool for class mobility. I suggested that there is something of value in learning to walk and talk among middle class people, something beyond alienation.

I have been thinking about this student all day. Did I tell her the right thing? Is a university education still a tool for class mobility? In this era of an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, will a university education help to change that inequality? Do I still believe in this transformative proposition? I have had doubts and worries all day because this young woman with her brains and her vulnerability and her certainty, her power, her clear knowledge of who she was and how power is located in the world, I do not want to lie to her. I do not want to disappoint her. I want to have the integrity she implicitly demanded.

I hope I told her the right things. I hope my words made a difference.

What would you have said?

Filed under: progressive activism, scholarship, teaching Tagged: integrity, teaching, Theories of Feminisms