Amy E. Stich - Access to Inequality. Reconsidering Class, Knowledge, and Capital in Higher Education

Because this book is based upon my dissertation research, I extend my deepest gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee, Professors Gregory Dimitriadis, Lois Weis, and Julia Colyar, all of whom have become the best kind of mentors and friends, continuing to deepen my understanding of the social world, and inspire my readerly and writerly mind. In this regard, I also wish to thank Dr. Michael Farrell for his critical insight as a fourth reader on the original version of my dissertation. Additionally, I wish to extend my gratitude to the graduate students (both former and current) in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffaloa community of young scholars who have provided me with perspective and support throughout this process. In particular, I would like to thank my dear friend and colleague, Kristin Cipollone. In addition to those already mentioned, there are countless individuals who have sustained their early influence and support. Among them, I would like to thank two very special women, Drs. Kelly Ahuna and Christine Gray-Tinnesz.

I am, of course, indebted to my family for their unconditional love, patience, support, and encouragement throughout the writing of my first book. They are: Don Stich and Linda Wood, Carolyn Hendrix, April Stich, Amanda Hastings, and Jennifer VanRysdam; and to my Canadian family, Ron, Dianne, and Michael Boyko. And, most of all, I am grateful to my partner, Robin Boyko, for sharing a life with me and the intimate history from which these words were born. In an uncharacteristic moment of religious proclamation, thank God for you.

I also extend my gratitude to the students, teachers, and administrators of McKinley College and the staff of the McKinley Museum of Art who offered their time and opened their lives to me with generosity, and with incredible moments of insight. Finally, I would like to thank Jana Hodges-Kluck and Lexington Books for seeing this through to publication.

... the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the mechanisms that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation.

Pierre Bourdieu, 1998, The State Nobility: Elite schools in the field of power

Driving down a sinuous stretch of highway, my eyes lift towards a towering billboard perched over the earthen periphery of McKinley College. The ground wraps around the College creating an intense, speed-driven edge to its northern-most border beneath the billboards enormous black font that reads, From Homeless to Harvarda message from the non-profit organization, Foundation for a Better Life. On this particular day, though I have driven along this highway on countless trips to McKinley, I notice these words and feel their meritocratic message, poised by the power of Liz Murrays personal ambition. A larger-than-life image of Liz holding a Psychology textbook sitting within a Harvard lecture hall is positioned next to the bold font that defines her success. Lizs story inspires and provokes the circulation of ambition among youth across America, and in this case, it touches down upon the youth of the beleaguered economy of Arkive, New York, wherein this research takes place. Lizs transition to Harvard is a message to drivers and passersbyit is a message of hope to this economically distressed community and the promise of success captured by individual ambition and knuckle-bearing, honest, hard work. Though meant to inspire, this message is far from neutral situated inside of a highly stratified system of education in which schools and colleges are the vessels of our meritocratic aspirations (Soares, 2007). And though perhaps without intention, it enables meritocratic ideology to circulate throughout Arkives urban air, touching upon commuting students on their way to class at McKinley Collegethe Harvard on the lake, as an aged professor used to refer to the school in his thick German accent. Years ago, as an undergraduate student at McKinley, I knew, along with my peers, that this comparison was merely a breath of condescension. Indeed, McKinley is not Harvard, and Liz is not all or even most disadvantaged youth. She is, indeed, the exception.

Though a comparatively small percentage of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds do enroll in and graduate from four-year American universities, including elite institutions such as Harvard (Bowen & Bok, 2000), these students are few among the majority of their higher-income peers. Statistics that track the percentages of low-income students attendance at the most elite institutions make the argument for meritocracy all the more problematic and all the more transparent. In fact, as the American system of higher education continues to experience the effects of economic, social, and political shift causing an increase in selectivity and competition across tiers, the percentage of low-income student enrollment to 4-year institutions becomes increasingly small (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Of course, these educational disparities lead to other forms of inequality (e.g., greater lifetime earnings).

During the 2008-2009 school year when this research was conducted, McKinley was designated as a categorically less-selective, tier 3, which is why Lizs story is so compelling and acquires a 45-foot backdrop to our early morning commute. This is the kind of mobility that demands our attention.

As a backdrop and visual to the invisible tension between expressions of the human condition (e.g., ambition) and the structural obstacles that interfere with the movement of many towards desired educational goals, this billboard introduces us to the rusted edge of a rust-belt landscape wherein struggle is all around. Situated on the perimeter of McKinley College, on the edge of a highway system that contributes to the geographic and residential segregation of the Black urban poor from the rest of the population of Arkive (Kraus, 2004), Lizs story reminds us that the path from Homeless to Harvard is billboard-worthy within an increasingly competitive system with increasingly demanding admissions requirements (Stevens, 2008). Lizs story also reminds us that elite institutions of higher education occupy positions within the system that enable others to remain situated at the opposite end. Though sharing a common institutional purpose, relationally produced lines of distinction are thickly displayed by socially constructed reputations and categorizations (e.g., institutional rankings), all of which position the two schools at opposite ends of a vertically drawn space. Within this space, it is perhaps more natural to look up or to climb than to fall back or to look down toward institutions of lesser distinction. In other words, this powerful image brings Harvard to McKinley, but it does not bring McKinley to Harvard.

But, what might happen if we did bring McKinley to Harvard, if only as an imagined reality? What might happen if we repositioned this signage on the perimeter of Harvards campus and reworked its text to read From Homeless to McKinley? Though the message is not about Harvard, but of one womans personal ambition, it does tell us something about the potency and unintended consequence of socially embedded messages. When we replace Harvard with McKinley, or rather, the elite with the non-elite, what happens to the image, the message, and the ways in which both are received? By replacing the elite institution with the image of a tier-3, less selective institution, do we reduce the power of the message? Do Lizs ambitions wane under the new weight of an altered institutional reputation? Though the message may continue to hold its inherent meaning, does it lose its dramatic edge as the backdrop to ambition? In this textual flip, we not only lose the engaging sound of alliteration, but, arguably, we also lose a great deal of effect and perhaps good sense in the absence of Harvardthe iconic, elite institution. Indeed, the Harvard communicated by the billboard is a socially constructed ideal. It is the weight of prestige and the power of rank. To summon Ren Magritte, it is not the