Letters: Struggling to Get a College Degree

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Your Dec. 23 front-page article about low-income strivers and college graduation rates ("For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall") is my story, though mine has a better, luckier ending. It is also the story of thousands of low-income students who may have the grades to attend college, but not the money or the cultural and social capital to succeed.

Beyond finances, poor students need advocacy and encouragement before and during college — something their wealthier classmates usually have. As professors and college administrators, we need to understand that not all students have the same experiences. Low-income students are working extra jobs, constantly worrying and struggling to fit in financially, culturally and socially in an environment that was not designed with them in mind.

Students need four-year aid packages and a less alienating campus environment. Otherwise, we will have another generation with high debt and no degree who may not share my own good luck.

ROBERT L. HAWKINS
New York, Dec. 23, 2012

The writer is an associate professor of poverty studies at New York University.

To the Editor:

Our educational industrial complex is failing our nation, not just the poor. Research universities and colleges like Emory University (where I once had the privilege to work) are a great national resource and are drivers of our country's prosperity through education and research.

However, by not controlling their spending, these institutions have allowed the cost of a private college degree (which can be over $210,000, or four times the $50,054 median household income in 2011) to become too expensive — not just for the students, but for the nation itself.

Even if every penny of this cost of a college education were paid for by university endowments or tax dollars, it would be hard to argue that this costly an education creates a reasonable return on society's resources.

I would humbly suggest that the critical portions of an undergraduate education could be and should be delivered at a lower cost to more students, so that our nation's youth do not have to face the personal tragedies of missed potential so well described in this article.

ANDREW GUTOW
Palo Alto, Calif., Dec. 24, 2012

To the Editor:

Low-income and first-generation-to-college students have a better chance of graduating within five years if their institution provides access to the same sort of personal, tailored support that those featured in your article received in high school from Priscilla Gonzales Culver ("Miss G").

Colleges frequently fail to recognize the key ingredient for success for many extremely talented low-income students: active individualized mentoring, especially in the first and second years.

When colleges protect their "investment" and help low-income students across the cultural divide that exists in higher education, then everybody wins.

LISA McELANEY
Brookline, Mass., Dec. 23, 2012

The writer is a trustee emerita at Bowdoin College.

To the Editor:

Your article about college and the poor was sad, but there is a lesson to be learned. Angelica Gonzales picked a very expensive out-of-state college and ended up with $60,000 in debt.

If she had gone in-state to Texas A&M, $60,000 would have paid for three years of room, board, books and tuition. That plus a scholarship she surely would have gotten would have paid for a four-year degree.

Alternatively, if she had gone to a community college in Galveston for one or two years, getting her core classes while living at home, and then finished at Texas A&M, she would have ended up owing very little.

Making poor choices is what kept her from succeeding.

ROBERT INKS
Baytown, Tex., Dec. 24, 2012

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