College Degrees of Separation
Remember the movie “Caddyshack”? And how big a deal that caddy golf scholarship was? My son and I traveled back to 1980 via that movie just the other day, and I was struck all over again at how ridiculous the rich and powerful gatekeepers were. Why would anyone have wanted to join their ranks? Better to lose the scholarship and retain one’s authenticity.
My reasons for going to college (a decade after the movie came out) were naively simple. I loved to learn. I wanted to do well in my career. And I wanted to live up to my parents’ expectations. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to aspire to a different social tier via my degree.
Even when I was earning my graduate degree, when I was selected to be the administrative assistant to the chair of the department, I managed to remain oblivious to the opportunities the position presented. I always felt that my boss was vaguely disappointed in me, but I didn’t have the time or energy to care. I was commuting 80 miles each way every day and working an overnight newspaper job on the weekends so they would hold my position for me during the year I was away getting my master’s degree. Some mornings I was exhausted to the point of nausea. But I loved to learn, and I always considered the sleep sacrifice worth it for the full-ride scholarship and the stipend I received from the university.
My kids’ reasons for going to college are similar to my own, with the caveat that they are more savvy than I was. I’ve been impressed by their desire to integrate into the ranks of the power brokers while retaining their authenticity. They weren’t particularly interested in attending exclusive universities—we are definitely a state school family—and hearing about my friends’ children’s lonely experiences at the upper echelon of colleges, I am grateful my kids made the choices they did.
I have one very tenuous connection to a single individual at Harvard University: My former thesis advisor is now a respected professor there. That’s been enough to interest me in some of their free online offerings, which are fantastic. They’re jam-packed with the exploration of ideas and research. Perfect for geeking out from a distance while still living my solidly middle-class life.
Those who choose the upwardly mobile path via college studies or employment fascinate me from a distance too. I’m fortunate to know a few of them, including Eileen G’Sell, who shared her insights recently in an essay and book review published under the categories of Inequality and Education. The book she highlighted, Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility, is about how difficult it can be to find a sense of belonging for those who attend or teach at elite institutions but don’t have the typical elite background.
I would argue that phenomenon isn’t limited to bougie schools. Eileen’s essay reminds me of an editing project I undertook last year on a surprisingly evocative doctoral dissertation. Its author, Dr. Melissa Venegas, shared her own revelation that even at a regular old state university, she was inadvertently “polishing” by correcting her students’ choice of words in the writing they turned in, marking up instances where they used colloquial language instead of focusing on the content and ideas they were expressing in their own unique ways.
As Eileen put it in her essay, “Did I ‘polish’ low-income students too—[author Melissa] Osborne’s term for refining minds, speech, and taste to match their elite peers—with nary a thought for what was buffed away in the process?”
With all the hullabaloo on the national stage about higher education, I think it’s worth evaluating individually what each of us is looking for and why the rhetoric about the evils of elite universities might/might not resonate with us. My suspicion is that those in the elevated world of the “Caddyshack” overlords have more of an axe to grind with such institutions than folks like me whose edges are too rough to retain the polish and are simply all about the information.