WEBVTT - Paul Tough on How College Makes Us or Breaks Us 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:04.000 I'm Bethany McLean and this is making a killing interviews, 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:07.520 exploring the headlines you thought you understood and finding the 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:11.039 lessons we can all learn from them. Already in this series, 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:15.120 I've spoken with Sahil Patel about Netflix, Mike Isaac about Uber, 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:19.439 and Peter Robeson about Boeing. I'm at Bethany mac twelve 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:24.880 on Twitter. If there's a difining commonality to upper income 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.360 life in America for people with children, it's school stress. 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.040 How do you get your kids into the right preschool 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:33.360 such that they can get into the right high school 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:35.919 such that they can go to the very best college? 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:38.479 And what sports should they play in order to improve 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:42.879 those very difficult odds, because, oh my goodness, everything hinges 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.000 on whether or not they attend the right college. So 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.320 for anyone who is already worried, the title of Pultov's 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:52.840 new book, The Years That Matter Most, How College Makes 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.320 or Breaks Us, is not exactly reassuring. He writes, it 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.480 sometimes felt as though the country was splitting into two 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:04.360 separate and unequal nations, with a college diploma the boundary 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.240 that divided them. As that quote shows, the issues this 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.440 book raises are so much greater than the stress it 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.600 causes the elite. And while we're all fixated on the 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.440 varsity blues scandal, that really is just the proverbial canary 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.560 in the coal mine. College, which was supposed to be 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.119 the great equalizer in America, has become something that both 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:29.640 depends on and reinforces class and privilege. This is a 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:32.680 huge deal for the business world, and not even mostly 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:36.800 because the impending student loan bomb threatens our economy. If 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.720 we're losing talent, we're losing more than mere words can say. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.600 This is, also, of course, a huge deal for our society. 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.680 It's not too grandiose to say that education determines the 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.400 shape of the society in which we live, So what 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.480 shape do we want that to take. Tuff's book was 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.400 fascinating to me for another reason. I'm obsessed with how 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:02.400 data can be manipulated, as Mark Twain famously said, lies 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.520 damn lies and statistics, How apparent facts can be not 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.120 factual at all upon closer examination. How words on the 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.120 surface can mask the reality underneath. This is a major 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.480 underlying theme of his book. What colleges tell the world 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.080 they want in their student body is not actually what 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.680 they want. The business of standardized testing is not only 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.720 more ruthless than you ever would have imagined, it's disingenuous 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.919 as well. The famed News and World Report survey of 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.679 the best colleges, well, what does best mean? Ohen, we'll 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.760 get into the pervasive idea that low income Americans should 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.480 skip college and become welders. I am so delighted to 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:43.760 be here with Paul, who has written three previous books, 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:48.120 including the best selling How Children Succeed, Grit, Curiosity in 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.600 the Hidden Power of Character. He's also a contributing writer 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.120 to The New York Times magazine, among many other things, 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.680 and he's here in Chicago on his book tour, so 0:02:57.720 --> 0:02:59.920 we get to record this episode in my home city. 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.440 So welcome Paul. Thank you great to be here. I'm 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:04.880 delighted to have you here. So before we get into 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.280 some of the numbers and the societal cost, let's start 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:09.720 with the individual human cost of this. I was so 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.480 struck by some of your characters. And you begin with 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:16.359 a girl named Shannon who realizes that this institution that 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.920 she's poured so much of herself into has decided she's unworthy. 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.840 What was this like to talk to these young students yeah, so, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.040 I mean, it was an amazing opportunity to do this reporting. 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:29.119 I mean, so it took me all over the place. 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.000 It took me six years to report it. But the 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:33.280 reporting that really sticks out in my mind is the 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.880 individual conversations with students who were making their way through 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:39.360 high school and then into college. And Shannon Shannon was 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:41.440 certainly one of the ones who stuck with me the most. 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:43.360 The thing that really drew me to her, and the 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:44.960 reason that I opened the book with her is that 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.360 I think she was the most idealistic of the high 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.240 school students that I met. That she really believed in 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.800 this idea of a meritocracy, really really believed in this 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.600 idea that college was this ticket to social mobility for her. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.280 She was growing up in low income, single parent home 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.480 in the South Bronx, an incredible student in high school 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.800 and wanted to believe that that was going to get 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.080 her to a college that was going to change her 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.680 life and change her family's life. But she felt an 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.960 enormous amount of stress on her to jump through all 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.240 the hoops and overcome all the hurdles in order to 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.600 get there. And she also as time went on, and 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:23.120 especially on the day that I was with her the 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:26.760 day that she was waiting to hear the results that idea, 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.440 that there was some logic to the whole thing, that 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.080 there was some sense that hard work paid off. That 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.240 idea was really under threat for her in her mind, 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:37.560 and it turns out to be under threat. Right. She 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.680 realizes there's a lot more luck in this than there 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:45.960 is necessarily any kind of meritocratic methodology. Yeah, I mean 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.359 it really felt kind of capricious. So she gets in 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.400 one place, doesn't get into others, and she realizes that 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.320 there is some way that it is just kind of random. 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:56.719 And part of what I tried to do in that 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.800 first chapter is use her story as this microcosm of 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.159 how the whole system can often feel random to students, 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.080 whether they're affluent or low income like her, about how 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.240 there's also these deep inequities and unfairnesses that for a 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:12.520 student like her who doesn't have family connections, doesn't have 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:14.760 family money, the obstacles for her are just so much 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.479 bigger than for anybody else. One of the fascinating things 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:19.760 to me was that the inequities you lay there continue 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:25.359 through someone's college career. There's a really emotional anecdote of 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.920 a young woman named Kiki Gilbert who's in her seminar 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.040 at Princeton, and you watch how she is playing a 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.520 different game, as you put it, than the other students. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.440 Explain that, Yeah, Key was another student I felt really 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.040 lucky to get to know. So she came from a 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.160 low income, really sort of chaotic family that moved around 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.640 a lot during her childhood, ended up in Charlotte, North 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:48.320 Carolina for the last few years of high school. An 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.400 amazing student got into Princeton, and then so I watched 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.159 her as she was making her way through her freshman year. 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:58.880 And academically she did great. I mean, a few hiccups 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.440 and bumps at the beginning, but mostly really did well 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:06.280 in her freshman year. But socially, emotionally, psychologically, the experience 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.080 of being thrust into this this world of Princeton that 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.719 mostly for her just felt very affluent, very white, very privileged. 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.400 It was jarring for her. Partly, it was just jarring 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:18.480 in the way that social mobility is always darring. When 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.880 you're a low income student. You're suddenly leaving behind your family, 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:26.279 your home, your culture, learning the new habits and customs 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:28.960 of this new world. But what really struck me for her, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:31.719 and sitting there in that Humanity seminar with her and 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.880 all of these mostly affluent, mostly white students, was how 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:36.880 she was kind of playing this different game. She was 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:41.400 very focused on reading the book extremely carefully and arguing 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.640 very precise way making her point about this ancient Roman text, 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.880 and all of the other students had this kind of ease. 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.160 They were sort of relaxed and laid back and sort 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:55.120 of ostentatiously laid back. Exactly what it felt like to 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.640 me was that she was playing this different game than them. 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.000 She was very sort of uptight and on getting everything 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.640 exactly right. And there are a number of sociologists who's 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:06.839 work I write about in this book that says that 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:10.320 this other sort of affluent affect, this laid back approach, 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.440 is actually how like how you make the system work 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.720 for you, Like that's that's what you're rewarded for at 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.120 a place, like it's what employers are looking for, and 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.840 so it becomes this very defining aspect. And I thought 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.200 it was so interesting that you point out that college 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.679 success isn't just about academic success the way low income 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.360 students who aren't raised in this world may think it is. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.040 There's this other game you have to know how to 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.040 play too. I found that fascinating and frightening. How did 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.880 the way you thought about upward mobility change? It's a 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:40.600 great question. I mean, so I've been drawn to the 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.640 question of upward mobility, I think my whole life, certainly 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.720 my whole writing career. It is just this phenomenon that 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:48.680 for me is important in two ways. One is that's 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.120 important in terms of the politics and the sociology of 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:55.080 the country itself, Like if you don't have upward mobility, 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.560 so many of the American ideas just start to fall apart. 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:02.000 But it's also fascinating to me just on a personal level, 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.720 like I just love hearing stories inspirational. Yeah, and and 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.880 and complicated too. I mean it's never smooth, it's never easy, 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.320 I think, especially when you're going through that mobility in 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:14.360 your late teenage early adult years, which are complicated enough. 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:17.560 So that's a lot of what drew me to that idea. 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:21.040 And you know, some of what drew me to writing 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.880 this book about higher education was this understanding that it's 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.360 those years, as those years right after high school that 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.200 now in American life have become so crucial in terms 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:33.480 of social mobility. You know, I've written a lot about 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.920 early childhood, about K twelve education in previous books, and 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:39.920 certainly what happens in those years is important, But it 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.720 is those college years or whatever happens to you after 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.679 high school that the signs in the economy are that 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.679 that now is the period that most defines what's going 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:50.880 to happen in terms of your mobility after them, which 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.040 is probably really frightening to any parent listening to this podcast. 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:55.640 But before we get into that, I want to come 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:57.560 back to a little bit this human cost and this 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:02.000 societal cost, because if system is broken, there's an awful 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.640 lot of waste, right, waste of human potential. Yeah, I mean, 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:07.640 I feel like that is definitely one of the big 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.680 conclusions that there are all of these young people, especially 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.480 from modest and low incomes, who have the potential to 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.240 be great students and great graduates and to contribute to 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:20.120 society in all sorts of ways. But the way that 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:22.440 we are doing college admissions, and then the way that 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.840 we are helping or failing to help students succeed and 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.600 persist and graduate from college, it's wasting a whole lot 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.559 of that potential, right, And I was thinking as I 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.040 as I read your book, how every business leader should 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:35.320 be taking an active role in thinking about this because 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.720 this is the future of their companies as well. So 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.920 I'm embarrassed to admit I actually didn't know about the 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.480 fate of the American Graduation Initiative until I read your book. 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:45.559 Tell us a little bit about that. You set it 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.440 up in a fascinating contrast to the GI Bill from 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.400 so many years ago. So explain that. Sure, yeah, I 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.280 didn't know about either. That makes me feel better. So 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.960 the President Obama when he was elected back in two 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.240 thousand and eight, early in his presidency, he may this 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.079 big promise, this big commitment. He pointed out that the 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:07.200 United States had fallen from being number one for decades 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.920 in terms of the percentage of its young people who 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.079 graduated from college, that we had fallen by two thousand 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:15.280 and nine to number twelve. There were eleven other countries 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.720 that were graduating more of their young people, and he said, 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:19.520 this is strong. We're going to change it. We're going 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.040 to get back to being number one within ten years. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.400 So he put the deadline at the end of twenty nineteen. 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.840 So it's time to check and see if we've succeeded, 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.160 and in fact we haven't. We are still number twelve 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.960 ten years later. So in this final chapter of the book, 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.040 I contrast that with the gi Bill era, where we 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.040 actually did commit as a country to changing our whole 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:44.320 approach to higher education, to educating a whole generation millions 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.719 of returning gis, and that had a huge effect not 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.560 only on those gis and their families, but on the 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.440 country a lot of what created the great post war 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.440 economic boom in the great American middle class of that era. 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.559 But by contrast, when President Obama in two thousand and 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.480 nine this pledge, this commitment, the country did not come together, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.480 and he and his administration and Congress did not put 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.320 the kind of resources behind it that happened in the 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.520 gi Bill era. And so the American Graduation Initiative was 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:16.160 one key factor in the sort of collapse of that dream, 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.480 of that commitment. This was a pledge to spend twelve 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.840 billion dollars on community colleges, which is really where I 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:26.960 mean all of the data suggest that is where investments 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.720 are most needed. That is, those are the institutions that 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.640 are most underserved, Those are the institutions that can help, 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:35.280 especially not the Keky Gilberts and the Shannon tauris Is. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.480 But the young people who are not superior students, who 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.480 don't have other options, community colleges can get them to 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.240 a good sort of middle class living if we run 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.160 those institutions right. But we haven't been. We've been underfunding 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.400 them for years, and so this was going to try 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.880 and reverse that, and it all got mixed up with 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.719 the healthcare bill and at the last minute, Congress just 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.360 sliced those twelve billion dollars from the budget. The White 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.640 House did not put up much of a fuss, and 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:03.719 it just got dropped. And what really struck me, I 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:05.120 mean the fact that you didn't really know about it. 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.000 I didn't really know about it. I don't think anyone 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:09.040 really paid attention to it. It was this, you know, 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.120 here was the President making this huge commitment and it 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.559 just sort of sank without a trace. And I think 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.200 that's indicative of the way that we as a country 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:22.280 have failed to coalesce, to motivate, to connect over this 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.120 goal of improving higher education to provide more social mobility. 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.640 It's a really striking marker when you think back to 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:30.679 the GI build. The contrast you set up is so 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.199 striking because you think back to how the country came 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:35.599 together over around that. I mean, of course there was 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.880 skepticism from the elites about whether we wanted this massive 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:42.480 you know, uneducated people descending on colleges, but the country 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:44.200 came together around that. And when you think of the 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.840 contrast to this just fading without even a whimper, it 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:50.640 made me worried that maybe education is a sign of 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.920 art decline as a cleerent society, rather than both causing 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.120 it and a sign of it. Right, yeah, you know, 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.720 there's these two sort of competing traditions in American history, right, 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.640 one is this tradition of mobility. So I went back 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:05.080 and read Democracy in America and what was so striking about? 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.280 So here's this, you know, French aristocrat Alexis Totokfille writing 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.600 in the early years of the United States about what 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.040 seems new and important and different about the United States, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.200 and it was social mobility that he kept coming back to, 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:18.320 and he found it sort of horrifying. He was like, 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.960 why can't the United States just have a nice aristocracy 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.679 like France does, so everyone knows their place in society. 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:25.959 But it was such a marker of sort of what 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.480 we believed in. But there I think at the same time, 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.920 there has been this long skepticism in the United States 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:35.320 about elites about education, about the idea that you need 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.280 to go to one of these elite institutions in order 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.240 to succeed. And I feel like right now those two 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:44.320 American traditions are coming together, are sort of colliding, yep, 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:46.840 betting heads with each other in a very interesting way. 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.120 And so that's also what's striking to me about the 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.400 Gibill era that what succeeded about it was sort of 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.359 an accident. You know that so many of the representatives 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.600 in Congress who passed this bill didn't really think that 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:58.600 many of these gis would take them up on it. 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.800 They thought, you know, these are working class kids, children 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.480 of farmers and factory workers. They're not going to go 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:05.240 to college. They're not going to succeed if they do. 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:07.320 And then they do, right, so then they all come back. 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.880 They all the American undergraduate population doubles in just a 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:15.120 few years, and this whole generation changes. And so I 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:19.160 feel like we're in another moment where Americans, and especially 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.440 American elites, are really skeptical that there is this potential 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.520 for many more working class and low income people to 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.840 succeed at college, except the need for it is even 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.040 greater now because the opportunities without a college degree are 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:34.120 so much less than they were in the nineteen forties. 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:36.160 Well maybe that's actually, in a weird way, a more 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.840 optimistic way to think about this, that societal change transformational 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:44.400 societal change has been an accidental surprise in many cases, 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:46.720 and the mere fact that so many people aren't on 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:48.880 board with it now actually as thus it ever was 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.360 right and we just need to get something done anyway. 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:53.240 If that's true, though, then there's the question of so 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:54.640 how is it going to happen? Like, how do you 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.800 get that moment where suddenly Americans are able to say, hey, 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.640 actually know people can succeed in college who we might 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:03.000 not expect to. So one of the things that struck 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.640 me in your book was all the data and the 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:10.040 way data has been appropriated and misappropriated and misused. You 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.200 came out pretty clearly, despite some data implying that good 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.160 students who went to Penn State were as likely to 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:18.000 do well as if they went to Princeton, you came 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.200 out pretty convinced that it does matter where you go. Yeah, 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.680 this is something that economists have debated for a long time. 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:28.240 I am persuaded by the work of two economists. One 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.640 is Carolyn Huxby, who is at Stanford. The other is 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.280 Ross Chetti, who's now at Harvard, and he works with 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.520 a whole collection of economists, a whole group of economists 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.840 who are studying social mobility, and they both in their 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.080 data have what I consider to be really strong indications that, 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:45.720 even if we would like it not to be the case, 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.200 that it matters a lot where people go to college. 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:50.680 If you look at it from an individual point of view, 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.360 if you're a parent worried about your child, or if 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:55.800 you're a student. I don't want people to interpret this 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.640 as saying, like, you, individual student, it really matters whether 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:01.760 you go to Princeton or Penn State, because I do 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.400 think that it's true that for individuals there's a lot 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.320 of variation. Especially affluent students, they tend to do well 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.200 no matter where they graduate from. But on a societal level, 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.680 it matters a whole lot. And it matters that the 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:20.720 institutions that are doing the most to produce high income graduates, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.960 which are the most selective institutions, It matters that there 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:26.000 are very few low income students who are going to 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:28.640 those institutions, and a lot of high income students. And 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.280 because the low income students are the ones whose life 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.400 has the most potential to change, right, I thought was 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:36.640 a very telling quote in your book that it actually 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.720 the elite college campuses are almost entirely populated by the 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.400 students who benefit the least from the education they receive. 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.080 So explain that. Yeah, so this is something that ros 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.000 Jetty and his colleagues found that when low income students 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.880 go to these super selective institutions what he calls the 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.720 IVY plus institutions, which are the Ivy League colleges plus 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.800 a few other highly selective institutions, their lives change a toime, 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.520 their potential, their income, how much they make as adults, 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.720 is just transformed. Whereas for affluent students, there is an 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.439 advantage to going to more selective institutions, but it's a 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:14.080 much smaller one. And so these institutions have this ability 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.720 to change the lives of young people like Shanatais and 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:19.800 Kekey Gilbert, and there are very few Shannonturis and Keky 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:22.760 Gilberts at these institutions. What raj Chetti and his colleagues 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:24.960 found is that I like at Princeton, for instance, I 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.639 think two point two percent of the student body came 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.320 from families in the bottom economic quintile, and almost three 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.960 quarters of the student body came from families in the 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.160 top income quentile. So talk about that issue a little bit, 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.840 because it's one of the most striking acts of disingenuousness, 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:42.840 for lack of a better way of putting it, in 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.320 your book, that colleges say, we want these low income students. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.320 This is a student population we want, but you point 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:51.760 out that actually the student population they want is precisely 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.640 the opposite of that. It's a complicated situation, and it's 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.639 difficult for me to know exactly what is going on 0:17:57.680 --> 0:17:59.720 at these at these institutions, like I mean, I think 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:01.399 there is I think there are a few things. I mean, 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:03.560 I think one thing is that raj Jetty's data is 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:05.920 a few years old, so it's from about twenty thirteen. 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:07.960 So some of these institutions say that things have changed 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.679 a lot since then, and that's possible that there have 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.320 been some changes, but there's a lot of what I saw, 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:15.840 especially looking at Princeton through the eyes of the student 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:19.159 Kiki Gilbert. That showed me that institutions like Princeton, there 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:23.080 are all these ways that they can nudge the numbers 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.160 and game the numbers to make them seem more economically 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:28.920 diverse than they really are. So my suspicion is that 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.600 that continues to be what is going on at those institutions. Right, 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.080 and colleges have a huge incentive to get people in 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.240 the door who can pay, and even the colleges who 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.480 don't need people who can pay have an incentive to 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:43.879 get high test scoring students in the door. Right, is 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:45.840 that the right way to summarize it. It's a great 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:47.400 way to summarize it. And so there are these two 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.600 different types of incentives that push different sorts of institutions 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.320 in the same way. And the sort of the algorithm 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.560 that comes out of it is admit more rich kids 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:58.639 for wherever, whatever kind of institution you're in, but it 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.440 is slightly different. So I some time in the admissions 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.760 office of a college in Hartford, Trinity College, which is 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.840 highly selective institution, but not as selective as those IVY pluses. 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:10.480 I just want to go there. After reading your book, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.480 I must say, so, Trinity like a lot of four 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.720 year private institutions is losing money. So a quarter of 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.720 four year institutions are losing money each year. They're losing 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.760 about eight million dollars a year. So they, like many 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:28.320 other institutions that aren't the very wealthiest institutions, they need 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.239 to admit more wealthy students just because they need to 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.080 stay afloat. Most of their income comes from student tuition 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.119 and fees, and so they need to look at their 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:43.840 applicants as potential customers. But that top echelon of schools, 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:46.520 the ones with the huge endowments, they don't really need 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.440 tuition dollars at all, and yet they are the ones 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.880 who are admitting the most affluent freshman classes. And there 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.560 I think it's much more to do with culture, you know. 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.520 I think there are all these reasons. Whether it's legacy students, 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:01.720 whether it's the kind of athletes that they care about, 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.840 whether it's students who have especially high test scores. All 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:10.399 of these what they consider markers of eliteness, exclusivity, excellence. 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.320