At graduation last year, a dean proudly announced that the class of 2014 would be the first in Columbia’s history to be “majority minority.” Here was a portal into our nation’s future: one in which whites would no longer be the majority, where they would no longer have a stranglehold on the kinds of advantages accrued at Ivy League colleges. All around me, people rose to their feet, cheering at how far they’d come.
They had reason to do so. Not long ago, many of the students arriving on campus this fall would not have been welcome. Women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews and countless others have all lived with the exclusionary cruelty of a dominant white elite.
But when we look at the class composition of our school, we might be less willing to pat ourselves on the back. Half of our student body comes from families able to pay full tuition: $55,000 a year. That is more than the yearly earnings of the average American family. To afford such a sum, you’d have to be among the very richest in our nation. $55,000 is such a staggering amount of money that even if a family makes $150,000 a year—placing them within the wealthiest 5 percent of our nation’s earners—they might still receive financial assistance. The median family income for Columbia financial aid recipients is $75,000, meaning that half the people who receive aid are among the richest 25 percent in our nation. To see just how wealthy our student body is, look at the percentage of students on Pell Grants. In order to be eligible for such grants, one’s family income must be below $50,000. Just over 15 percent of our student body receives such grants, and we’re the best in the Ivy League!
Why do about half our students come from among the richest 5 percent of Americans? Are rich people just smarter?
They’re not. The difference between rich and poor is quite simple: The rich have more money, and they can use that money to buy advantages for their children (my own life fits this story). Though poorer Americans experience a host of disadvantages—lower-quality schools, few out-of-school enrichment programs, the absence of support when they struggle—research has shown that colleges are blind to these challenges. This is in stark contrast to students who are legacies, athletes, or members of a minority group. Though students from these three groups are given special consideration by colleges, increasing their chances of admission, poorer students are afforded no such luxury. They may claim otherwise, but colleges are “need-blind” in the worst possible way. They are ambivalent to the disadvantages of poverty. These problems are only getting worse. In the last 30 years, the number of students from the poorest 25 percent of American families attending top colleges has held steady at 10 percent. At the same time, the richest 25 percent of American earners are taking up more and more seats.
Columbia is part of our nation’s new inequality. We live in an increasingly open, yet unequal society. The wealthy are driving this inequality. From 1967 to 2008, the average American household saw its earnings increase by about 25 percent. As we move up the income ladder, we see something quite dramatic. The incomes of the richest 5 percent of households increased by 68 percent, and the further up we go, the greater the increase in income. The top 1 percent of American households saw their incomes increase by 323 percent, and the richest 0.1 percent of Americans received a staggering 492 percent increase in earnings. Why has inequality increased over the past 40 years? It’s because the rich are seizing most of the spoils of our economy, resulting in levels of income inequality that we haven’t seen since the end of the Gilded Age.
We should be proud of the ways in which our society has opened racially. For Columbia to go from almost no black students in the 1950s to a black student population that represents the overall national population is nothing short of a revolutionary transformation. But there is a missing revolution: one in which poor and average Americans can have a fighting chance of acquiring the kind of education and advantages that a place like Columbia provides. Columbia has been part of the solution in opening its doors to the racial groups it previously excluded. But it also remains part of a problem: Our school is still disproportionately a place for the rich. Until we find ways to address that problem, you will have to excuse me if I do not join you in cheering how far we’ve come.
The author is an assistant professor of sociology. This is the first week of the new Editorial age feature “After Office Hours.” Each Friday, a professor will share scholastic wisdom readers won’t find in lectures. Suggestions regarding which professors to feature are welcome. opinion@columbiaspectator.com
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