The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students

“The Privileged Poor know what life is like below the poverty line. They also know how the 1 percent learn and live. The Doubly Disadvantaged only know the former.”

One of the key distinctions Jack makes throughout the book is between the Privileged Poor and the Doubly Disadvantaged. He argues that the former come into Renowned three or four years ahead of their Doubly Disadvantaged peers, because they already have been prepared for both the rigors of norms of college life as well as the culture of their wealthier peers. However, both groups are still impoverished and suffer food scarcity and the other problems.

“We do poor students as a whole a disservice if we assume that their stories are all the same.”

The impetus for Jack’s research is his belief that colleges have too often lumped all lower-income students into one category. That is, even when universities set up programs with the best intentions of helping disadvantaged students, they fail because they do not recognize that the Privileged Poor and the Doubly Disadvantaged face unique challenges. The book offers solutions to this problem, which require that we first recognize the diversity of experiences and needs.

“This book gives voice to those students who have not yet told their stories, or even worse, who have had inaccurate stories told about them.”

The bulk of the book is based on interviews with students. While most research about disadvantaged college students has focused on cultural capital and quantitative statistics, Jack offers qualitative research that lets the subjects speak for themselves. Additionally, by cloaking the students and university in pseudonymous anonymity, Jack universalizes their experiences.

“Her friends look shocked. Rebecca, twisting her long blond hair behind her ear, responds, ‘Oooooh. You should come with me to Italy!’”

This anecdote comes from a conversation Jack overhears on an elevator between four white girls as one of them learns the other has never tried espresso. He notes how common such interactions are for students at Renowned. Jack uses this anecdote to frame Chapter 1, suggesting that students who cannot afford such trips would feel a culture shock at being surrounded by peers whose life experiences and customs are so different from their own.

“Renowned may provide a ticket to economic mobility, but in the case of the Doubly Disadvantaged, there is a price for that ticket. For many, that price is steep.”

While introducing the culture shock Doubly Disadvantaged students feel when they matriculate at Renowned, Jack underscores one of the central claims of his book: Elite colleges owe disadvantaged students more than mere entry into their schools. He uses playful language to disprove the idea that these students have received a handout—though the students are on scholarship, they do still pay a price.

“The ‘it’ brand is constantly changing, and the Doubly Disadvantaged are keenly aware when their wealthier peers take up new styles.”

Popular brands at Renowned changed even during Jack’s research time: For example, the expensive North Face jackets were extremely popular until replaced by even more expensive Canada Goose jackets. Lower-income students cannot afford (or cannot justify the purchase of) brand names, but they are aware of the trends and recognize another point of separation between them and wealthier peers on campus, who can identify any student’s socioeconomic status simply by their outfit.

“Nicole was able to code-switch, managing her peers’ impressions of her by choosing when and how much to share about her life.”

One Privileged Poor student had been to France for study abroad in high school. This makes her not only used to the exotic vacations her wealthier peers go on, but actually able to participate in the discussion. Thus, she can switch at will between blending in and talking about her socioeconomic reality—a unique skill that the Doubly Disadvantaged have not yet developed when they enter Renowned.

“A moment later, Marie reaches into her Longchamp bag, pulls out a hardcover book that looks as pristine as if it had just been removed from its Amazon packaging, and asks, ‘Can you sign your book for me?’”

Being comfortable asking adults for favors is something those used to elite institutions are able to do, and Jack uses this anecdote to showcase just how common such interactions are on campus for those who are comfortable doing so. The details Jack conveys about the experience also tie together themes from Chapter 1, as Marie is carrying one of the status bags popular on campus, suggesting she is similarly at ease in interactions with her peers.

“When professors mention office hours, often only on the first day of classes, they tell students when office hours are. They almost never say what they are.”

Faculty assumes all students know and understand all aspects of college life. Jack singles out office hours as one such assumed norm; students who went to elite high schools generally understand the concept and are quick to make close relationships with professors, but Doubly Disadvantaged students are often unsure what happens during office hours. In emphasizing the difference between “when” and “what” office hours are, Jack makes abundantly clear the confusion that exists and implies a very simple solution: have professors define terms rather than assuming everyone speaks the same language.

“Their strategy was not to network.”

While students from privileged backgrounds come to college with a strategy for how best to network with faculty, Doubly Disadvantaged students have no idea that they are expected to do so in order to achieve success. Additionally, many of them come to college believing that making personal connections with staff is a way of sucking up and are morally opposed to doing so.

“And then, these kids who go to professors after class and just talk to them. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I don’t have any questions beyond what they’re teaching. They’re kiss-asses!”

Daniel, a Doubly Disadvantaged Latino student, cannot even fathom what students talk to professors about; he sees them as suck-ups and admits that he does not want to have to grovel for grades. This interaction highlights two separate but related points: Many students do not understand commonly accepted terms such as office hours, and there are cultural barriers to the type of networking Renowned encourages and indeed requires from its student body. Daniel and other students have been taught that the world is a meritocracy and cannot understand why anyone would want to be known for anything other than their work; thus, the expectation that they talk openly to adults offers another form of culture shock.

“Clarissa connected with her adviser in ways that went beyond choosing classes. Their relationship was personal, and her adviser helped her discover that some administrators have access to discretionary funds to help students through emergencies.”

Students who have close relationships with advisers get access to resources other students would not even know about. Specifically, Clarissa, a Privileged Poor Black student, got a loan for a new computer and even better access to help from the financial aid office. Because Renowned erroneously assumes all students are willing to talk to staff, the school fails to realize the unequal resource allocation given to students who know how to ask for help, usually those with backgrounds in elite high schools.

“If an undergraduate feels uncomfortable attending office hours to ask questions about a research paper, how likely is it that she will ask for help for an emotional problem?

Students have difficulty in addressing mental health issues. Jack describes the disparate mental health journeys of three students noting that Elise, a Doubly Disadvantaged student, was least willing to ask for help. Here, he uses a rhetorical question to connect his discussion of office hours to mental health: Students who don’t know how to approach an adult for routine things will also not know how to ask for more serious help.

“Understanding how students gain access to institutional resources and supports—and the hurdles that get in their way—is a first step. Being explicit about the types of relationships that are expected between students and faculty, as well as making clear that all are invited to enter the spaces where these bonds are forged, is another.”

Schools could make a variety of changes to help disadvantaged students. There is a difference between admitting a more diverse student body and making all students feel welcome. While understanding the lives of disadvantaged students is the first step, one of the easiest fixes is simply articulating to all students what is expected of them and making those expectations easy to meet; after all, it is not fair to put the onus for a hidden curriculum entirely on students.

“Well damn, Tony, I too am hungry.”

When Jack showed students pictures of gourmet food he had made, one student, joked about being hungry, alluding to a media campaign about the experiences of minority students on college campuses. Food scarcity is one of the experiences both the Doubly Disadvantaged and Privileged Poor students at Renowned share, especially during spring break when the cafeterias are closed.

“Nicole’s anger was palpable. Coming to Renowned gave her firsthand knowledge of experiences she had grown up hearing about while sitting at her grandmother’s knee: what it’s like to be a Black woman cleaning up after wealthy, White people.”

In Chapter 3, Jack discusses the shared experiences for all poor students on campus and pays particular attention to Community Detail. While most students who work Community Detail experience some form of othering or humiliation, the experience is especially painful for Black and Latino students due to race. The stereotype in American culture is that Black and Latino people clean up after white people, so the experience of doing so on campus triggered painful memories about work Jack’s subjects’ families had done or often continued to do—painful, since attending Renowned is supposedly the path out of such lives.

“Students who worked Community Detail were judged by their peers, not their professors—for their cleaning ability, not their academic performance. And the burdens of the job did not end when their shift was over.”

Community Detail involved cleaning up the dorm bathrooms of students’ peers, humiliating work that continued to humiliate even when off duty. Classmates would approach students who worked in the program to complain about the job they had done or offer a Christmas bonus as though they were the help. While Renowned administrators created the program to eliminate some class distinctions, the program actually exacerbated tensions, leaving disadvantaged students in a servile role and feeling as though they needed to prove they belonged at Renowned by doing manual labor their wealthier peers would never do.

“But for anyone standing in the theater foyer, or in any of the many other places where students used Scholarship Plus, the image of segregated facilities was unavoidable.”

One of the many well-meaning, but flawed, programs Jack highlights is Scholarship Plus, which covered the cost for students to attend up to five campus activities per semester. While the program was generally seen positively by most students and staff, its execution ostracized students as they waited for tickets in a separate line. This experience made students feel they were not part of the main campus community, the exact opposite of what the program’s designers imagined.

“We already have unstable home circumstances. It’s hard to support yourself if you don’t have the money to feed yourself.”

One aspect of campus life that both Doubly Disadvantaged and Privileged Poor students felt equally was, sadly, food scarcity. Michelle, a Privileged Poor Latina student, had to visit a local food pantry during spring break; the experience reminded her of the instability she had felt earlier in her life during bouts of homelessness. Jack argues that merely being on campus does not make disadvantaged students feel they are home—if a student is starving on an empty campus, how is she supposed to feel a full citizen of that college?

“She was treating Tinder as if it were OpenTable. Many of the students in the audience shook their heads in sympathy.”

At a conference in 2015, a young woman in a Columbia University sweatshirt announced one spring break strategy for dealing with food insecurity: making as many dates as possible so they would buy her meals. This means young people put themselves in potentially harmful situations that could be avoided if schools simply kept their cafeterias open. To make this point, Jack uses a clever turn of phrase, making the book appeal to a mass audience rather than a purely academic one.

“Poor students—whether they come from prep schools or not—pay the price for university policies that effectively make money mandatory for full citizenship in the college community.”

Chapter 3, unlike Chapters 1 and 2, concerns shared experiences that all poor students feel on campus, regardless of their high school backgrounds. Here, Jack argues that these shared experiences are the results of decisions made by institutions, not the students. Additionally, he uses the word “citizenship” to remind the reader that colleges owe something more than access to students—they owe them a sense of belonging and community, neither of which can be found when someone is starving.

“More and more elite colleges, standing sentinel, offer a twenty-first-century update to Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus: a beacon promising hope to all those who are determined and striving, who have grand dreams and unrelenting drive, yet find themselves held back by a lack of money.”

Jack quotes the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, implicitly linking the story of Renowned University’s inclusion (or lack thereof) with that of America’s. Just as America was the land of opportunity for immigrants, Renowned is the land of opportunity for the disadvantaged. While Renowned and other elite institutions have made great strides at welcoming the huddled masses to their campuses, they have not yet figured out how to integrate them into campus life—that’s where Jack’s work comes in.

“Diversity must be continuously cultivated. The elite college must change, adapt, and grow right along with its changing student body.”

Throughout the book, Jack notes that merely welcoming diverse students to campus does not actually make the campuses diverse. Too often the burden is on the disadvantaged student to blend in to the dominant culture rather than feeling heard or seen. Jack explicitly urges colleges to change in order to create the diversity they claim to want, diversity that can only be cultivated by first understanding the new students colleges have matriculated.