Community College: The Great Equalizer?

(Photo by Tai's Captures/Unsplash)

As we were putting the final edits into this essay, we received news that Mike Rose had died at the age of seventy-seven. During his forty-year teaching career, he wrote movingly about his students and their experiences in the classroom. His empathy and insights were informed by his background as a child of working-class immigrants. We were proud to publish a number of his essays and to work with him in 2011 on a special section he co-edited for Dissent on “Re-imagining Education Reform.”

—The Editors

In the American consciousness, education is, in Horace Mann’s words, the “great equalizer” of class differences. Through schooling, students can ascend the social-economic ladder. The journey of first-generation community college students provides one way to consider this belief. As inequality widens and rigidifies, what economic barriers to success do such students face?

Let us begin with the basic objects it takes to go to school: books, paper, notebooks, pens and pencils, calculator, computer, cell phone, tools, and supplies. Some of these items might be covered by financial aid awarded to needy students, though that aid can be late in coming. It is not uncommon for students to be in the second or third week of classes without books. For students in occupational programs—from construction trades to cosmetology—tools and kits of supplies are essential. If they are damaged or stolen, students have to divert money from other necessities or cast about for an emergency loan. Unless students are in an unusually well-funded program, they are typically on their own for computers and other electronic devices.

Inequality is not only material but also spatial. To be a successful student takes a place to study, to read those books, to write, to practice the skills and routines of a trade. Though COVID-19 closed down many buildings, there are usually designated spaces on campus for those whose family and work commitments and transportation arrangements permit their use. Otherwise, one hopes for a room. A nook. A corner of an apartment—not always possible if one lives in close quarters with family or friends. One student I mentored read his books with a flashlight on the front steps of his parents’ apartment. Another student I interviewed set a little table in one of her halfway house’s bathrooms—a table of her own.

Some students have no stable place to lay that book at all. According to the #RealCollege Survey of the Hope Center at Temple University in 2020, 52 percent of students at two-year colleges reported being “housing insecure.” They are short on rent, close to eviction, or they have crossed that line, staying temporarily with relatives or friends or couch surfing, one step away from the streets. Another student I mentored slept in his car for six months until one of his instructors secured him Section 8 housing and bought him bedding and towels. A student he knew slept behind the dumpster in the back of the school’s library. They showered in the gym when it opened at 6 a.m.

According to the #RealCollege Survey, 39 percent of community college students report worrying about having enough to eat. Food pantries exist at over 700 two- and four-year colleges across the country. The experience of poverty includes several sensations: the gnawing in your stomach, woozy lightheadedness. For students with a family, the gnawing can be psychological as well as physical. They worry that they have failed as a parent. Access to healthcare, let alone quality healthcare, is also a major problem in low-income communities. Students growing up in such communities are generally exposed to environmental toxins and might not have been adequately treated for chronic diseases like diabetes or asthma, or for dental, vision, and hearing problems. Universal standard eyecare alone would have a positive effect on these students’ retention and achievement.

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