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Does Academia, Including Philosophy, Exclude People Based on Class?

Brian Leiter

A political theorist writes:

I am pleased that the Leiter Reports continues to provide a forum for discussing the important issue of gender imbalance in academic philosophy.  It needs to be noted, however, that some of the regular discussions regarding both admission to graduate schools and the hiring of faculty are deeply troubling regarding the accessibility of the profession to individuals from poor or working class families.

It probably goes without saying to this audience that the wealth and education levels of parents play a crucial role in one’s development of the skills necessary to gain admission to selective undergraduate institutions (including how to navigate the process of admissions).  Among first-generation college students, fewer than 1 in a 100 graduate from high school with the SAT scores in the 146 most selective American universities (Bowen, Kurzweil, and Tobin 2005).  In fact, poor students are frequently passed over for less qualified (according to institutional standards) students from wealthier families who will pay full tuition, be likely donors, have counselors with connections to admissions directors (Schmidt 2007, Atlantic Monthly 2005, Sacks 2003, Toor 2002).  Moreover, need-based financial aid has fallen sharply as a percentage of tuition, leading many of those unlikely few who are selected to choose a lower-tier college, where aid is more likely to be scholarships and grants instead of loans (Schmidt 2007).  Not surprisingly, children of wealthy parents are 25 times more likely to attend one of most selective schools than children of poor families (Carnevale and Rose 2003).  As a result, graduate admissions processes that focus on pedigree may functionally shut poor students out.

 

Class plays a profound role in an individual’s willingness to assume the financial risks involved in pursuing a career that requires 9-15 years of largely unremunerated and often costly job training.  Having the resources to purchase the latest books, travel to conferences, having friends and family with experience in academia to show you the ropes, to not have to work to support yourself or help your family, and so on plays a major role in a person’s ability to be successful in graduate school.  These factors are almost completely unrelated to a person’s talent and dedication as a scholar or teacher of philosophy.  Nonetheless, they may play a profound role in one’s ability to have a career in the profession, in ways that could be mitigated by changes to our norms and institutions.  To give just one example, consider the following oft-mentioned job market strategy: do not enter the job market early, because PhDs tend to become stale.  If this is an accurate reflection of the job market, such a norm has significant consequences for the accessibility of the profession to poor and working class individuals.  Such students are likely to need more development time in graduate school.  They are also unlikely to be able to afford it, likely to have worked quite a bit during graduate school, and faced substantial pressure to finish the dissertation and get a job that paid real money.

 

The central purpose of philosophy programs is not to further equal opportunity.  Nonetheless, many of the norms and practices within the profession, as represented in discussions in forums like the Leiter Reports, have the effect of making the philosophy profession far less accessible to poor and working class individuals, in ways that shape individual opportunities, the diversity of perspectives within the academy, and indeed the sort of work that is found interesting by those in the profession.

Thoughts from readers on these issues?  Signed comments preferred, though students need only include a valid e-mail address.  As usual, submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

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50 responses to “Does Academia, Including Philosophy, Exclude People Based on Class?”

  1. Jason Brennan

    Anecdotally: I come from working class family (or, more precisely, what was working class until just about my junior year of high school, when parents got large pay raises, enough to disqualify me from financial aid.) I was a first generation college student. I paid for college (that part of it that wasn't covered by academic scholarships) out of my own pocket. But I'm doing okay. I don't expect my experiences to be typical, though I know of certain philosophers working at top departments who grew up in very impoverished backgrounds.

    Reply
  2. Jason Stanley

    In my experience, there is a serious and long-standing problem in the profession with overemphasis on pedigree, as measured by an individual's undergraduate academic institution (which is, as the author notes, often a substitute for class). The problem is most notable in graduate admissions, but persists throughout the entire assessment process. I have heard colleagues at multiple institutions praise job candidates, even senior job candidates, on the basis of their undergraduate affiliation. More importantly, there is no doubt in my mind that this deeply influences the mentoring process, both consciously and unconsciously. I doubt I will live to see a day when my colleagues don't heavily over-emphasize undergraduate affiliation in graduate admissions. But I hope to live to the point when a colleague's bringing up a candidate's undergraduate affiliation as a consideration in hiring is considered as unacceptable as bringing up that candidate's religion.

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  3. Jason Stanley

    Unfortunately, in my experience, coming from a working-class background does not seem to diminish an academic's proclivity to overemphasize undergraduate institutional affiliation in assessment. Often, quite the reverse seems to be the case. And undergraduate institutional affiliation is often the best indicator of class status that we have in the States.

    Reply
  4. Manyul Im

    My own experience is that with some of the class-related groups, there's quite a lot of self-selection pressure not to enter academia–especially philosophy or some other humanities field. The group in which I personally felt that kind of pressure is the recent-immigrant group, a group within which there tends to be a lot of first generation college students. There was a lot of hand-wringing and some deceit I had to carry out (telling my parents "I'm going to go to law school.") in order to pursue an academic career; it's not the sort of thing that most children of immigrants are willing to do. Without offers of financial support and a lot of debt, I wouldn't have gotten through.

    When I was teaching at Cal State University in Los Angeles, I met a lot of first generation students who, even if they excelled in philosophy courses at a high level, would never seriously consider an academic career–they were their families' great hopes for financial security. And let's face it, even with the highest of prestige jobs in academia, no one is making "top" money for how smart he or she is, particularly in philosophy.

    To a certain extent, I don't think the "pedigree" issue arose for me because I went to a large public university (Berkeley) that has a great reputation. I do have some doubts that pedigree can get you much further than admission into a good program, if at all; after that, no one's going to be fooled by mediocre talent, in my opinion. Maybe there's empirical data that could shed light on this.

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  5. Ben Reese

    I believe data regarding standardized tests like the SAT should be taken with a grain of salt because the SAT tends to suggest more about class than it does about the aptitude of the students and their ability to learn. The verbal section of the SAT generally has more to say about the environment a student grew up in and less about their ability to think critically and coherently. It also does not help that SAT prep classes are so effective and that those classes are accessible to the upper and middle classes.

    I do not want to come off saying that standardized measures are a bad thing to have when dealing with admissions, but I think it has to be acknowledged that the hoops set up to get into college favor wealthier classes and the assessments have a language bias.

    Reply
  6. anonymous grad student

    This issue has been on my mind a lot recently. I do think that working-class students have to fight a lot harder to enter the profession, both as graduate students and on the market. My department is currently trying to decide whether to make dissertation fellowships competitive and raise the amount of money given to students. I'm at a state university; money is tight, and the standard has been to guarantee a one semester fellowship to every doctoral student. The problem is, the amount of money we would make in that semester is FAR less than we make teaching. We could cut down on the number of fellowships awarded each year and make them livable. There's been much talk on the part of those who want to maintain the status quo of 'fairness' and 'equal opportunity'. Academia is twisted. Those of us who don't have mommy and daddy to fall back on when we need extra money, or have families or other obligations, are forced to turn down the fellowship and teach for the semester, or to get another job while on fellowship, defeating the purpose.

    The reason I share this is that almost no one has made any mention of class issues in the conversations surrounding this issue. Somehow, even though grad school is a meritocracy, it is more just to pretend to give equal opportunities to every grad student (while actually discriminating against students who don't have the resources to take advantage of those opportunities) than to make things competitive and support those who are doing well in the program (and at least in my program, division based on merit would not at all mimic division based on class). So, anecdotally, I would at least say this: the philosophers I have dealt with have no clue about the import of class issues and the way that working-class students are being impacted by the way they make decisions– admissions, fellowships, etc. It's not even on the radar, as far as I can tell.

    Reply
  7. Barry Lam

    In the Chinese-immigrant and Mexican-immigrant communities of LA of which I'm familiar, the general trend seems to be that the first generation of poor kids that go to college don't consider any "risky" or highly exclusive professions, not just philosophy, but the liberal and fine arts generally. Nobody I grew up with had goals of being actors, models, or fashion designers, much less literary critics and philosophers, unlike many of the kids I teach here at Vassar. (Although there were some aspiring film-makers and writers in East LA, where I grew up.) Probably the primary reason is just what the political theorist cites, "Class plays a profound role in an individual’s willingness to assume the financial risks involved in pursuing a career that requires 9-15 years of largely unremunerated and often costly job training," especially when, unlike in engineering, law, and medicine, the prospects for job success are slim and the paths are completely alien to your parents, family, and friends.

    I would add that there are a couple of other psychological factors I can speak to personally that may be one among many barriers to success in a discipline like philosophy. Children from the kind of working-class backgrounds I know about (immigrant) generally are not raised in family or school environments in which they are intellectually rewarded for challenging adults in positions of knowledge and authority, like teachers, parents, and so forth. The kids I teach at Vassar come into college very well-prepared to engage an instructor in debate and discussion; they are confident about their abilities and they are socialized to find that adults respond positively to their assertions of independent thinking. I sat in high school classes where teachers were trying to survive, in which everyone was told to shut up or they would be suspended, in which parents smacked their kids for talking back. Going to college from these environments may be enlightening for many, but there is undoubtedly going to be some kind of lag while such kids not only learn new content, but new expectations as to what are the rewarded ways of interacting in an intellectual environment (no more passivity.) On top of this, these kinds of childhoods usually mean that the intellectual self-esteem of kids from working-class backgrounds will need quite a bit of time, pretty significant amounts in my own experience, to reach the level of those of their peers from middle and upper-class backgrounds, should they decide to pursue higher learning. Most kids just fallback to more familiar kinds of learning if they simply think (falsely) that they aren't good enough.

    Intellectual self-esteem became a factor for me in graduate school and I attribute much of it to my background. In graduate school, I suddenly found myself surrounded by peers from Ivy-league institutions, or who had parents in academia, or who had parents who at least went to graduate school of some form or another. Maybe it was the crowds I was hanging around, but I never found this in college, where everyone I knew was a first-generation college student. The idea of having parents who were college educated or higher was so foreign to me that it just seemed amazing and enviable that my peers could go home and TALK SHOP with their parents, or that they were involved, for their whole lives, in an intellectual environment that was not as different from graduate-school as the environments I knew about. Some catch up is bound to be necessary, not in learning content, but in developing the psychological preconditions that allow a student to reach his/her potential in a field like philosophy.

    All that said, I don't know if these things "could be mitigated by changes to our norms and institutions." It seems to me to be asking too much of philosophy as a profession to tend to these large-scale sociological and psychological trends. I'm not sure it is even advisable to do something so as to de facto stratify graduate programs into "middle and upper-class" tracts and "working-class" tracts (wow, sounds pretty evil just writing it!) And plus, judging from the names of people posting on this, most of us seem to have turned out okay!

    Reply
  8. Eddy Nahmias

    Three thoughts:
    1. In my view the class issue is a serious problem that should be examined and addressed (e.g., by the APA and individual departments) alongside the important issues of gender and race that have been discussed here recently. I'd be surprised if the difficulties of "working one's way up" into professional philosophy were not related to the under-representation of minorities in our profession.

    2. As the Undergraduate Advisor at a school (Georgia State) where over half of the undergrads are first-generation college students, I can attest that these students often benefit from structured mentoring that other students have received informally from their family and friends (or high school teachers who groomed them for college).

    3. One way to gauge (very roughly) how much undergraduate pedigree matters would be to see whether top PhD programs systematically favor undergrads from prestigious schools over students who went to less prestigious schools but then get an MA in philosophy. Of course, there are all kinds of confounds here, but I get the feeling–and it's just a feeling–that some programs will prefer a phil major from, say, Yale who demonstrates lots of *potential* for achievement over a student who went to, say, a state school but then excelled in her MA program and has already demonstrated achievement.

    Reply
  9. Patty Steck

    It seems to me that a crucial pivot point here is the practice of conducting initial interviews at APA. Graduate students with finacial support from family can afford to go to the conference, while it is much more difficult for folks without such support.

    Thus, folks from working class families are hired less often and are underrepresented. This underrepresentation influences future hiring practices and graduate admissions decisions.

    If initial interviews were done over the phone or via Skype, it wouldn't cost candidates money to be interviewed and, eventually, the underrepresentation would be mitigated.

    Reply
  10. Ken Taylor

    I grew up in a working class family. My father grew up as a dirt poor sharecropper and worked all of his life in factories. He had an 8th grade education. I was the first one in my immediate family to complete college — though both of my older brothers attended college, neither finished. My younger sister did, though, and even went on to graduate school.

    In our town, the ublic school system heavily tracked students — most African Americans were consigned to the slower tracks. I was an exception. That enabled me to get a decent high school education at a decent public high school in a not wealthy town. I went off to Notre Dame — which was a life changing experience. I hadn't imagined the possibility of an academic career in a discipline like philosophy growing up. But some very caring and inspiring teachers opened my eyes to the possibility late in my college career.

    What's the point of these remarks? Not sure. Is class a barrier? Certainly yes and for many different reasons. Working class and poor people on average go to significantly worse primary and secondary schools than middle class, upper middle class and wealthy kids. Even if they live in places where they have access to decent schools — like my small industrial town that didn't have a large enough student population to support 2 public high schools — they are often pushed into lower tracks (I always thought of the heavy tracking in my school as a way to introduce segregation on the cheap).

    By the way, one sad thing about the recent economic turmoil is that at places like Stanford, which have recently taken major steps to make the university financially accessible to a broader demographic of students, the new financial aid models are under considerable stress. We need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to sustain our current commitment to increased financial aid over the near term.

    But if one runs that gauntlet and gets a good high school education which enables one to get into a college or university that will educate you well, then I do not think having working class roots is a huge barrier. But the gauntlet that one must run in our society in order to overcome the structural disadvantages that face working class people is steep indeed.

    Thinking about combatting that at the point of graduate school admissions is to focus on very much the wrong pressure point.

    Reply
  11. Working-Class Grad

    I'm glad this is getting some attention. I come from a working-class family myself, and I'm the first in my immediately family (and much of my extended family) to go to college at all. So this issue is something that has worried me.

    There's no doubt that coming from a prestigious undergraduate university often makes for smarter students right out of undergrad. Most likely the student came from a well-educated family in which education was instilled and fostered starting at an early age, etc. I see nothing wrong, then, with using such information as evidence of an applicant's abilities. My worry is that some able applicants will be flat-out ignored and quickly thrown into the rejection pile simply because they started out low on the totem pole and are trying to work their way up by getting a masters or transferring from a lower-ranked PhD program. This is a bit of speculation, but I've just heard that some top programs have a serious bias against such students. Of course, the non-cream-of-the-crop programs don't seem to have this bias. I've actually seen a large number of PhD students with prior graduate work in various non-top programs. But the bias seems to get worse on up the ladder. I don't have a great deal of evidence for this, though. So I'd be interested in hearing what others think.

    One might reply: "Well, just get your PhD from a non-top program and then, if you really are hot stuff, publish your way to the top!" But, as we've seen in recent discussions on this blog, pedigree—particularly in where one has received the PhD—is a significant factor on the job market as well.

    Reply
  12. MYN

    This is certainly a timely issue, though the emphasis on pedigree is even worse outside North America. Having experienced the admissions process at an Oxbridge college first hand, I can only say that I was shocked by the classist assumptions on display. Applicants from state schools were routinely dismissed as "damaged goods", and more than one person told me straight out that by the time students apply to college from state schools most are already so far behind their independent school peers that they couldn't fairly be admitted. I saw many highly qualified, bright students be dismissed on these grounds – the interview seemed like a formality, aimed at creating pretty statistics rather than fairly assessing the students' potential. The Ivy League seems like an engine for social change by comparison, which is pretty sad.

    If the aim of admissions interviewing is to admit highly qualified, intellectually gifted students, then my egalitarian instincts would lead me to admit a slightly less accomplished applicant from a state school rather than a student from an independent school, since her accomplishments can confidently be attributed to her, not the expensive education she has received. Incidentally, classism and sexism seem to go hand in hand in this context – the comments I overheard about female applicants' looks were unprofessional, to say the least.

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  13. Anon Student

    Besides pedigree and economic issues, being from a non-academic lower middle-class background (not exactly working class, but close enough I reckon), I've noticed that I'm lacking what one could call "cultural capital," e.g.: I'm not acquainted with modern art or serious music, which means that I'm frequently unable to join conversations with fellow philosophers who come from higher class backgrounds (though this may be peculiar to the German speaking world); the same holds true for philosophy itself, friends of mine have read many important works by the age of 19 or 20, because they were available at their parents bookshelf, whereas I, at that age, had never even heard the name of those works' authors; and while some colleagues of mine knew since their graduation from highschool what it means to be a professional philosopher and what and how they should study to become one, I've chosen philosophy without any clear idea of what the whole subject was actually about and certainly without the aim of actually becoming a philosopher (in case you're courious, I majored in another subject and was drawn into philosophy later) – all in all it took me about one to two years to acquire the knowledge those colleagues of mine had from the very beginning. To cut a long story short, while pedigree and economic issues are crucial, there are other, so to speak, cultural obstacles that should not be forgotten.

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  14. Jason Stanley

    Ken – thanks for providing evidence for my second point!

    Reply
  15. Anon student

    More than half of Oxbridge students are "damaged goods" from state schools – I was one of them. I'm not sure which college MYN might be referring to, but I doubt such practices are very widespread any more.

    No matter how bad the undergraduate admissions process is at some of these colleges, it needn't impact on the graduate admissions process, which happens primarily at the departments.

    Reply
  16. Brian Leiter

    Jason: I don't see in Ken's post evidence for your second point. His concluding lines sum up his post well:

    "If one runs that gauntlet and gets a good high school education which enables one to get into a college or university that will educate you well, then I do not think having working class roots is a huge barrier. But the gauntlet that one must run in our society in order to overcome the structural disadvantages that face working class people is steep indeed. Thinking about combatting that at the point of graduate school admissions is to focus on very much the wrong pressure point."

    What's to quarrel with here? One can get well-educated at many different kinds of colleges and universities, but surely getting well-educated is helpful! I also think Ken's final sentences makes an important point, though this issue is not high on the public agenda in the U.S.

    Reply
  17. Ralph Wedgwood

    I completely agree with the point that many others have made on this thread, that philosophy departments' graduate admissions committees and hiring committees ought to take pains to avoid discriminating on the basis of the applicants' undergraduate institutions. But I also think that philosophers ought to get involved with their university's *undergraduate* admissions process. Widening access to higher education has to be done across the board, not just at the level of graduate admissions or hiring.

    One crucial question that every graduate admissions committee has to ask itself is whether the applicants will be ready to start graduate-level work in philosophy in a few months' time. While many colleges and universities that are not famous institutions (including many institutions outside the English-speaking world) will enable their more talented students to get to that point, some of these institutions will in fact have provided a much better preparation for graduate study than others. Even if the committee judges how well prepared the applicants are by reading their written work (rather than just going by the reputation of their teachers), those who have received a better undergraduate training will have an advantage. It is important to try to ensure that this advantage is not restricted to students from more privileged backgrounds. But the only way to try to ensure this is to get involved in the undergraduate admissions process.

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  18. Student

    While I appreciate all the philosophers at highly ranked schools putting themselves out as examples of persons from working class backgrounds who made it, I find it a bit disingenuous. If you look at their CVs (or know something about them), you will see that they usually had a connection with someone who did have the proper pedigree and privileged background who became their defender, their benefactor. Not everyone is so lucky to meet or attract such a person. The academic from lowly roots who lacks a a benefactor has to struggle on his/her own merits and second-class credentials. Another way to tell what a philosopher's socioeconomic background is (and that s/he lacks a benefactor) is to look at how many adjunct and VAP positions s/he has held. As mentioned, the under-privileged academic does not have the luxury of waiting out the tough job market. S/he has to take whatever jobs s/he can get. The privileged academic or under-privileged academic with a benefactor, on the other hand, usually only has one or two academic appointments, and tends to secure a sweet TT position or a postdoctoral appointment and then a sweet TT position straight out of grad school. Must be nice!

    Reply
  19. Canadian Grad Student

    Some thought:

    given that there is clearly issues of class and pedigree at issue, and this likely plays a role in admissions, I wonder whether students who come from low pedigree state (or in my case, provincial) schools who have a good application are a better bet for admission than a student from a high pedigree school, with a similar portfolio.

    Here is my reasoning, which is, of course, defeasible.

    1. If a student is coming from a lower income family, and/or went to a undergrad school with low pedigree then not only did they likely have to deal with certain road blocks that students from high income and high pedigree schools did not, but they might have had to work harder just to get to their apparent level of quality.

    2. In my own program, for example (mid ranked on the Report), the students who have excelled the most in the last couple of years (since I got into the program) have largely been from low-pedigree schools, while those of who dropped out, or who are struggling, are often from high-pedigree schools. (put differently: a greater % of low pedigree students seem to be doing well). If this is not a fluke, then such a trend could be explained as follows:

    3. Hypothesis: grad school is hard, and requires commitment, and dedication, and however much of a leg up one got before, it does not translate into grad school success. Hence, students who have already had to show commitment, and dedication, just to have a shot at grad school, might be better prepared for the grad school grind.

    Now I am not trying to draw any STRONG conclusion, of course, but am merely noticing a trend based on my own (limited) experience. Of course, my reasoning is defeasible, but it is just a thought, and if it is biased, then perhaps a bias in favour of "low-class" students is a good thing.

    Another point: should "class" be taken into consideration when looking at grades? Compare the student at the high-pedigree school with straight As, versus the one from a low-pedigree school, with several Bs. The latter might have had to work full, or part, time, and in my experience it is exceptionally difficult to keep up grades when you have to work 20 hours a week at Walmart, or a restaurant. Again, this might count in favor of low-pedigree students, if for example, they are being considered at a state school, where they will have to TA; they already have experience balancing school and work.

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  20. Heath White

    I think we are missing the upside. Although academia generally, and philosophy in particular, may disproportionately favor the wealthy for getting into the profession, it is sure to lower those folks’ standard of living significantly. So we can be comforted that the profession as a whole is an engine of class equality, and the more wealthy grad students we admit, the more scions of wealth will be reduced to penury before long.

    Reply
  21. R. Kevin Hill

    1. My own decision to pursue an academic career was undoubtedly colored by a subliminal sense of being economically safe due to a middle-middle white collar professional family of origin. I can only imagine that coming from a background of economic uncertainty that this would color how one perceived the risks.

    2. I was really surprised to find that legal academia is much more meritocratic and objective than humanities academia, having observed both from up close.

    3. My wife has a working class background (father worked in a steel mill) and I was very struck by the subtle cultural barriers. Liberal middle class academics are schizophrenic about class: when talking in the abstract about economics, opportunity, etc., well, almost everyone talks a good game. But under the guise of either criticism of religion or major party partisanship, almost all of them I've ever met just drip and ooze with contempt for working-class people, and they don't even know it. Unless you believe that there is some abstract personhood that is independent of all real facts about a person, and that it is this embodied abstraction that is worthy of respect, one cannot profess concern about working class people while simultaneously having nothing but contempt for, say, people with Southern accents, people whose families have been deeply embedded in religious communities, people who suspect (fancy this) that the mechanisms of power and privilege however understood are utterly beyond their ability to influence. The fact that a substantial chunk of that very mechanism exploits those resentments to its own advantage does not fully explain the thoughtless and reflexive contempt. I think that middle class academics *mean* *well*, in the same way that people who expressed homophobic comments in a world in which all gays were closeted *meant* *well*–if there isn't a warm body in front of you to say "wow, that's really offensive" (in, say, a Southern accent in response to a Yankee comment about "stupid hillbillies") then learning simply can't occur. So the problem is self-perpetuating. Working class people largely do not fit in to the culture of academia, and thus are not found there, and thus the unwelcoming character of academia to them continues to be invisible to those who are in it.

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  22. Jason Stanley

    Brian – I just think it's factually mistaken that people who go to schools that are very expensive are better educated than (say) people who went to SUNY Binghamton. I think that those who go to Ivy League schools are (say) better at holding knives and forks in polite company, and knowing how to behave among their elders, but that's it. Therefore, I think it is important to -among other things – fight for students from all kinds of institutions during graduate admissions. Giving into the false belief that someone from certain very expensive schools is therefore better educated is morally wrong (I'm aware that's not what you're saying). That's why I objected to Ken's final point. We philosophers have very little power to influence issues of class. Graduate admissions is one place we can make whatever small difference we can. And as Ralph said, undergraduate admissions matters probably even more. So we should all be involved in undergraduate admissions in our institutions (not that I am now, but I plan to be).

    In response to the student who questions philosophers who put themselves out as coming from working class backgrounds – Ken's story is actually quite remarkable, and very very unusual. I'm glad he shared it.

    Reply
  23. Robert Johnson

    I'm happy to see a discussion of these issues. I myself am from a rural working class background and the first person in my family, both sides as far back as anyone can see, even to attend a college or university. I seem to have done ok, but once I became class conscious, I became more aware of some hurdles, barriers and biases that could make it difficult for working class people to make their way through academia. I think it's a nice question what really explains the data mentioned in the post, however. My own experience seems to conform somewhat Jason's remarks; ugrad pedigree can be a proxy for class in hiring, and unsurprisingly I have seen academics with underclass backgrounds who are overly impressed with pedigree. But perhaps there is also a certain amount of self-selection that explains it too. Hard to say with only bare numbers to stare at.

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  24. Brecken McKenzie

    Heath White clearly underestimates the roles of inheritance and pensions.

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  25. Robert Gressis

    I went to an undergraduate school, which is not, so far as I know, considered a high pedigree school. That said, because, perhaps, of the fact that many of my peers weren't very academically interested or capable, I and those of my peers really interested in philosophy got a LOT of individual attention from the faculty there. This helped my philosophical development substantially.

    I think graduate committees should take that into account (if they don't already) when they get an application from someone who comes from a lesser school.

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  26. Ken Taylor

    Jason:

    What point did I make that you are objecting to? I think you're projecting onto me some issue of your own that has nothing to do with anything I said.

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  27. Branden Fitelson

    I wholeheartedly agree with Jason's post.

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  28. mark lance

    I completely agree with the emphasis Jason is urging here. First, he is just obviously right about quality of education. I went to Ohio State as an undergrad. (Second generation college from rural, southern Ohio families.) I think I came to grad school with at least as good an education as others from Harvard, Oberlin, Berkeley, Yale, etc.

    ANd giving preference to undergrad pedigree is simply wrong.

    That said, there are real differences in education. Not Ohio State vs Yale, I think, but either of them vs. – well, insert a small school with one or two not so good philosophers. But here, while school ranking might be of some evidential value at an initial cut, it seems to me that it goes precisely the opposite way at the second cut. That is, once we have read papers, we have some direct idea of what someone is capable of. Now suppose x and y wrote papers of roughly equal quality. x went to Harvard. y went to southwest shithole community college. Isn't the fact that y achieved this with worse training, fewer advantages – probably having to work while in school – no professor to look over everything and show what arguments matter, etc. a significant point in her favor? That is, school pedigree should be no concern at all. School quality should be a (small) negative factor.

    This point seems to apply at hiring also. After a campus visit, one should have enough evidence to swamp most such considerations, but not all I think. There is always, in a junior hire, significant guess-work about how someone is going to progress over the next decade. And the fact that they have done their work with less help is surely a relevant factor.

    All that said, I certainly agree with Ken that the main point of focus societally is not at the level of grad admissions. We can do some here, but far more of the structural oppression occurs earlier. We philosophers can do more, I think, by working seriously to identify talented undergrads from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and then by helping them develop their talents. We can even put ourselves on college admissions committees and try to have an influence at that level.

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  29. Matthew Kramer

    MYN's picture of undergraduate admissions decisions at Oxbridge colleges does not even remotely correspond to my own experience of making such decisions for the past 16 years. More than 70% of the undergraduates admitted to my Cambridge college across all subjects are from state schools, and the proportion is even higher in Philosophy and other humanities subjects. Both my faculty and my college expend very substantial amounts of time and money on efforts to encourage students from low-income families to apply here; as far as I am aware, the same is true of every other faculty and college in Cambridge. I'm sorry to concentrate on an issue tangential to the main focus of this thread, but one major factor that tends to hold down the number of applications by low-income students to Oxbridge is the propagation of canards like those in MYN's message.

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  30. MYN

    Anon. student at 11:55am writes:

    "More than half of Oxbridge students are "damaged goods" from state schools – I was one of them. I'm not sure which college MYN might be referring to, but I doubt such practices are very widespread any more.

    No matter how bad the undergraduate admissions process is at some of these colleges, it needn't impact on the graduate admissions process, which happens primarily at the departments."

    *Of course* the graduate admissions process is impacted if students from poor or moderately affluent backgrounds aren't even admitted to study philosophy at the college level! This means they won't even be part of the applicant pool for graduate school – a clear impact. As to whether such practices are still widespread: The Economist recently presented exactly the "damaged goods" argument I criticize with approval, so it's hardly a ghost from the past. Also, we cannot determine whether the practice I witnessed was atypical merely by looking at the percentage of students admitted from state schools and independent schools – that would be a fallacy. For all your figures show, state school students may be grossly overrepresented or grossly underrepresented or take up exactly as many spots as they deserve – the actual distribution by itself tells us nothing.

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  31. Margaret Atherton

    I am very haoppy to see this discussion since I agree with Jason that an overemphasis on undergraduate pedigree can serve as a unwitting class barrier. Although we have had students in our MA program who have done very well indeed dispite an unimpressive undergraduate pedigree (so that there is at least the possibility of overcoming this handicap with an MA) in far too many cases it seems that students from lesser known colleges face an additional complication when it comes to getting into PhD programs.

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  32. Christopher Hitchcock

    In comparing my own graduate school experience with those of my peers who were not as well off financially, I think that even small differences in wealth can make a large difference at that stage. For the most part, I lived off my stipend, but I came to grad school with a small financial cushion (a few $K), and my parents chipped on for a few odd things — a new computer for a birthday present, trips home during holidays, etc. I think that small difference can have a big impact. Academically, it can mean the difference between having your own computer or using a ones in a computer lab, and attending conferences or not. Even more it can affect your social life: having a car, going out for drinks, attending concerts, wining and dining potential romantic partners, traveling home for holidays. Things like that can really add up toward preserving your sanity, and making the difference between flourishing and surviving.

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  33. anonymous grad student

    I just want to echo and support R. Kevin Hill's point, as well as some of the points that folks have made about whether it might be that high-achieving students from state schools should be looked upon more favorably than relevantly similar achieving students from ivy-league schools.

    Probably the most difficult thing about grad school for me has been adjusting to/confronting the culture shock, including dealing with constant comments from other grad students about "white trash", poor people in general, uneducated people, etc, and just in general seeing how much other people take for granted in terms of the privilege that they have. I came from an urban commuter state university, and adjusting to this is difficult. I often find that people simply assume that uneducated people and working class people are simply stupid.

    In addition, I do think that working-class undergraduate students often have to overcome a great deal of obstacles, including working, supporting families, dealing with things like imprisonment of family members, immigration problems, etc. So I think there is at least a case (obviously there are exceptions on both sides to this)to be made for favoring these students over students who were supported by their families, etc., where those students are relevantly similar in terms of academic skills. I think these students are probably at least somewhat better prepared for the difficulty of graduate school life.

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  34. G. Owen Schaefer

    As a grad school applicant, I generally agree with the worries about class in academia evinced above – a sort of affirmative action based on family income has a great deal of appeal to my mind. I believe, however, there has been too much focus here on eliminating pedigree from grad application consideration as a solution to obvious class disparities. The debate above seems to have conflated two distinct issues: the problem of class disparities, and the usefulness of pedigree in determining grad school preparedness.

    While there is undoubtedly a correlation between one's class and one's pedigree, it is important to remember that there will also likely be a similar correlation with every other aspect of one's application. GREs are effectively SATs, which have been shown extensively as highly favoring those from wealthier families. The quality of letters of rec will in part be a function both of the perceived research strength of one's school (better pedigree -> more well-regarded writers) as well as a school's ability to mentor students (better-endowed schools will have smaller classes and instructors with more free time with students). GPAs will also presumably correlate for reasons Christopher Hitchcock and others bring up above – having a computer, needing to take a job to support oneself, etc. Finally, even a writing sample's objective quality will vary depending on an individual's time to spend editing it rather than working a job, how free one's advisers are, how much one's university is able to invest in high-quality writing instructors and editors, the ability to travel and attend conferences which may be relevant to improving the work, and so on – all of which will correlate with an individual's economic background.

    My general point is just that eliminating pedigree from the application process won't do much to alleviate the problem of class-bias, because comparable class-bias will creep in at every other stage of the application. Arguably the correlation will be weakest at the point of the writing sample, but GPA, GRE and letters of rec would still work to powerfully maintain class-bias in academia. There may be independent reasons to eliminate pedigree from grad applications, but such a shift would not go very far to solve the grad application class-bias in question.

    That is why in my humble opinion the best sort of thing academia can do to correct for this bias is an across-the-board advantage given to grad applicants (and maybe job applicants too) from disadvantaged backgrounds. Note that this could have the added bonus of accomplishing limited racial affirmative action which might otherwise be illegal, as class and race often correlate.

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  35. Ofra Magidor

    This is somewhat tangential to the main issue, but I just want to reiterate Matthew Kramer's comment: as someone that has been involved in admissions for three different Oxford colleges in the last six years, I can say that I never encountered *any* bias against state school applicants. And indeed both the university and colleges are investing a very large effort in getting more bright students from low-income families to apply to Oxford.

    Of course, growing up in a wealthier family might give you all sorts of advantages in life, including ones that might put you in a better position to apply to a very competitive undergraduate program. However, in as much as possible, we do try to take that into account in admissions (so for example, GCSE marks are assessed against the background of the average scores from each candidate’s school).

    Sorry to go slightly off topic, but like Matthew Kramer I believe that propagating these urban myths about Oxbridge does a lot of damage to potential candidates from low-income families.

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  36. Columbia Undergrad

    I have one small caveat to the above discussion, which I agree is wonderful. That is, I am a student from a working-class background who managed to get into an Ivy league school for undergrad and decided relatively early on to study philosophy seriously. From what I've noticed in my three years here, the students who succeed are pretty much evenly split between those who come from extremely wealthy parents (and went to boarding schools like Andover, etc) and those more like myself who come from less well-off families. The students that I notice to be the least successful, however, are almost always wealthy and feel like they are entitled to do whatever they want (recall our 43rd president). I am, however, a little bit dismayed that so many of you are making assumptions about my financial background based solely on my institution (a large percentage of my tuition is covered by need-based aid and I work year-round contributing myself). Now I am 100% in favor of combating class in undergrad/grad admissions, but I think that I would be outraged to find out that I was not accepted into a graduate program simply because I was classed with my wealthy classmates in my elite college. Furthermore, frankly, I think that the amount of energy that I put into my education at a school this good should count in my favor. And if, as I claim, many of the less well-off students here are among the more successful, I think that you should either find a better measure of class than pedigree, as many of your better applicants may well be contradicting your assumptions about elite schools and class.

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  37. DB

    I have also been involved in Oxbridge admissions for several years, at various colleges, and I want to challenge MYN for the same reasons identified by Matt Kramer. As it happens, at least in Cambridge – I haven't seen the figures for Oxford – the proportion of state school applicants to admissions is the same as, or even slightly better than, that of private school candidates. While it is no doubt the case that some admissions tutors do harbour regressive social views (as is true everywhere), far more of them are very keen to encourage state school admissions, and bend over backwards to do so (especially in the humanities). The main problem remains the fact that not enough state school pupils apply to Oxbridge to radically alter the balance between state and private school students – a balance that I think is very depressing. Sadly, there is a (lazy) tendency to blame class inequalities in education in the UK on the universities, and especially Ox and Cam. This misses the main problem, which is the very existence of the private sector, which exerts a profound and pervasive influence on opportunities from a very early age. It acts as the main engine for reproducing the class system. By the time we get to tertiary education, there is only so much that can be done – and most Oxford and Cambridge colleges invest a huge amount of time, effort, and energy in doing what they can to redress the inequalites. But it is an uphill battle.

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  38. Rich Muirhead

    There seems to me to be a relatively simple solution to the problem identified here: adopt a "common application" system so that the admissions process amounts to something akin to blind review (or, at least, something possessing the qualities of fairness and objectivity that blind review is often alleged to possess). No references whatever to the student's institution of origin on any application materials–including, thank you very much, recommendation letters. After all, what should matter about a recommendation is what the instructor has to say about the applicant, *not* who the instructor is or what he or she has (or hasn't) achieved in the profession. Then perhaps decisions can be based on what actually matters, instead of allowing pedigree to creep in to the process. I realize this would probably make admissions committees have to work harder to achieve the same results. Congratulations, guys, now you know what it's like to come from a "lesser" (read: not as wealthy) school or the lower classes!

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  39. Brian Leiter

    Who the recommender is and what his or her comparison class is are important pieces of information for interpreting a letter of recommendation. Many letters draw comparisons (helpfully, I should add) between the applicant and other graduates of the school who have gone on for PhD work, and these are both illuminating and often more reliable than the standard puffery that fills too many letters. So Mr. Muirhead's "solution" strikes me as a bad one.

    I am also glad the Columbia undergrad pointed out that it is a different form of unreliable stereotyping to assume that if X went to Columbia, X must be wealthy. So, too, I assume the apparent implication earlier that, e.g., working class people are religious was also not intended. (And to the extent that some portion of people from working class backgrounds believe that they can not affect the system, kudos to them for having the more sensible view than the "liberal, middle class academics" being chided here.) I guess we should all be careful with the generalizations at work here.

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  40. matt smith

    Ken Taylor and Barry Lam make very strong points. I wish to second them.

    But, while I do think that while combatting class-based burdens at the level of graduate admissions cannot eliminate class-based burdens, this is the process over which we as faculty have the most control. That is, insofar as a philosophy professor has a moral or political commitment to combat injustices in academic philosophy due to class-based inequality (i.e., injustices in academic philosophy due to inequalities _produced_ by economic inequalities due to the contemporary socioeconomic class system), that professor ought to act, at the very least, within the sphere of graduate admissions.

    Consequently, I think that we *should* think very, very hard about the class-based considerations that might be problematic in admissions decisions.

    My two cents then:

    a. The GRE ought to be weighted as little as possible. People who do not grow up getting trained to take standardized tests usually do poorly on these tests. Those who are working class almost never get such training.

    b. Undergraduate affiliation is way over-rated. I agree with Mark Lance that writing samples should do most of the work. Obviously, grades and recs should matter too, but our assessments of these are infected by the reputation of the undergrad institution. I also agree with Lance that great papers from students who are from schools with less-than-great departments should be much bigger plusses than great papers from students from schools with super fancy departments.

    This raises a problem, of course: how do we read hundreds of writing samples? We need _some_ system for weeding out a lot of apps very quickly. Suggestions?

    c. There is serious grade inflation at most fancy universities. But at many state schools there is far less grade inflation. So imagine this: a Boise State and a FANCY U student get the same grades, but the FANCY U student gets the pedigree, whilst the BSU student actually gets *marked down* because s/he's from BSU… even though it is almost certain that she is a better student than the FANCY U student!

    To that end, I recommend that we ask department chairs to collect grade distributions and to make that information public. This would be an excellent way to assess the meaning of that 4.0 a student proudly sports on his/her application.

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  41. Anon Grad

    I just want to note that the suggestion that "high-achieving students from state schools should be looked upon more favorably than relevantly similar achieving students from ivy-league schools" does not seem like the right kind of solution.

    I'm from a working-class background. I went to a mediocre/poor high school in the West (roughly 30% of my 700 person class went on to any kind of post-high school education; only 10% went to a 4-year college or university, and of those, about 5 of us left the state for college).

    Against long odds, I went to Harvard, becoming the second person in a decade from my high school to go there. I couldn't afford it, really, even with a generous financial aid package. I still owe a ton in loans (this was before places like Harvard gave funding in the form of grants, rather than loans), and I had to work 20-25 hours per week while in school and 60 hours a week over the summer in a series of crappy jobs that were the only jobs available close to home (and I had to live at home over the summer to save money).

    I've got to say, it was totally worth it–no regrets. But I did have to work much harder while in school than many of my classmates, and I started with considerably worse preparation. I ended up being a "high-achiever." But it was not thanks to any class-based advantages anywhere along the way; it was in spite of class-based disadvantages, which were, if anything, *intensified* because I went to Harvard.

    Using 'attended an Ivy' as a proxy for wealth seems like a bad idea. Particularly since many of the very best schools actually have the most generous financial aid packages. (It would likely have been much more expensive for me to go to, say, Duke or USC. And Harvard is/was one of the only schools in the US that had need-blind admissions for international students.) Certainly we have better proxies! For one, we could ask that grad applicants list non-academic work that they engaged in while in college. I'd wager that if you see summer jobs waiting tables, delivering pizzas, working in warehouses, working on fishing boats, etc., you've found yourself a 'working-class' kid. On the other hand, those 3-month long intensive Greek programs in Athens are probably pretty good markers for non-working class, though there are always exceptions. Or you could ask people to list the high school they attended. Or whether they took out loans, received Pell Grants, etc.

    Finally, even given a policy like the one suggested above, it seems like a mistake to treat test scores, grades, writing samples, and letters of rec the same when comparing two candidates, one from an 'Ivy' and one from a 'state' school (scare quotes needed b/c many state schools are clearly comparable with many of the so-called Ivies).

    If A is from Podunk State with no real philosophy program and B is from Harvard, and A's writing sample is as good as B's, that should count weakly in favor of A, I would think (maybe strongly, if it's apparent that A didn't get much in the way of mentoring).

    But if both A and B have letters from a long-time faculty member saying that "A/B is one of the three best students I've had in a decade of teaching" (and let's say they are not notorious inflaters), I would think that counts weakly (at least) in favor of B. The talent/ability just runs deeper at Harvard than at Podunk State. (Though I agree with J. Stanley that this shouldn't be seen as having much to do with the 'education' that people receive at the two places.) Anyone who says otherwise hasn't spent much time at Podunk State. Which is, of course, not to say that there aren't truly talented students at Podunk State.

    For grades, I would care less about GPA and more about relative class rank (though schools are cagey about this, there are usually ways of discerning this information, particularly if you see many apps from the same schools), since private schools are notorious inflaters. But if A and B are both top 10%, again, I think that counts in B's favor. B is just competing against a generally more talented pool, even given the significant role that wealth/legacy/test prep/college counseling advantages play in admissions. Harvard may well have 600-700 public high school valedictorians in a given year in a class of 1600. Podunk State would be *very* pleased to have 100 public high school valedictorians out of a class of 5000.

    For test scores, I would measure them straight up, and require that all candidates disclose whether they took any test prep courses or had personal test prep sessions. (I think this should be done with the SAT as well. Maybe someday.)

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  42. punk-rock ABD

    I’m glad that somebody brought this problem to light, because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about (angrily, at times) for quite a while.

    I didn’t grow up poor, or even working class…but I’m not from the elite class, either. I went to an urban high school in the Rust Belt where I learned nothing academic whatsoever – all my English classes had one set of 25 books for 125 students – but picked up more life skills than you could shake a nightstick at. I went to a good state school, but not the best state school. I learned what philosophy was when I was 20. I got into a good graduate program, but not the best graduate program. I could have gone to law school, and would probably be making some money now, but instead I made the choice to live as high class white trash for my entire adult life in order to pursue my dream.

    I often wonder about the possible worlds in which my doppelganger was from the elite class. What if I had learned something in high school? What if I had gone to the best state school, where the cost of living was prohibitively expensive, or even a small liberal arts school, with prohibitively expensive tuition? Would this have gotten me into a better graduate program? Would this increase my chances of getting a good job my first time out on the market, rather than hoping for something mediocre that will allow me to pay my bills and loans for five or ten years, while I try to publish my butt off and, by the age of 50, make it up the food chain?

    I also wonder what things would have been like if I’d had adequate financial support for graduate school, either directly from the program (likely at a better program) or from parents, family members, and so on. Maybe I would have written better papers in my courses, had I not been working minimum-wage jobs on top of teaching to try and make ends meet. Maybe I would not have been so completely stressed about trying to juggle work and school along with expensive professional demands like conference travel, and maybe I wouldn’t have developed mental health problems as a result of that added stress.

    There seem to be two main problems here. The first one has little to do with academia – it has everything to do with our country’s horrible education system. Simple facts like where your parents live can have a huge impact on one’s eventual ability to succeed in academia, simply given the chain of events that begins with a distinction between the student who is exposed to learning in high school and the one who isn’t.

    The second problem does have something to do with academia, and is what seems to have the greatest psychological consequences. The class differential often goes unnoticed, but you can tell when it’s there – it’s like being the punk rock kid who accidentally walked into the opera house. Students who are working other jobs and are struggling financially often appear to be lazy and unmotivated; they also miss out on valuable networking experiences due to a lack of money (and sometimes even transportation) needed to participate in popular but expensive activities.

    The ultimate culmination of this, of course, is the job market. My CV is awesome. But will it get a second look, when compared to slightly lesser CVs from very highly ranked programs? Unfortunately, it probably will not.

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  43. Lisa Shapiro

    I am finding myself thinking of my graduate incoming class. We came from quite an array of educational backgrounds — some went to prestigious private colleges/universities, others to less prestigious ones, still others from state schools without any particular national prestige, and others were international (non-UK)m (and half of us were women). It seemed that the admissions committee might actually have factored some goal of diversity into their deliberations, but the diversity might have been an accident. I would be curious, though, about the current state of graduate admissions at top 20 departments: What does the demographics of admitted students look like, with respect to where they hail from geographically and educationally? What does the applicant pool look like? Would it be too hard to make (at least geographical) diversity of admits a goal of admissions?
    While I was raised and educated in the US, I now teach in Canada, where all major universities are public (even the ones with names of people!). I am struck by how much of this discussion really doesn't translate well. Students typically stay in province for undergrad. Any one would be silly to make assumptions about student quality on the basis of where they grew up.
    With regard to Matt Smith's last suggestion: Some universities actually indicate the class average grade on transcripts (next to the student's grade for the course). It would be great if we could persuade all registrars to follow this practice.

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  44. Jacob T. Levy

    I agree with most of what has been said– though I notice an increasing emphasis on the problems of grad admissions/ undergrad training, which seems to me like a bit of a deflection onto the world *not* created by us academics. The barriers don't disappear after admission, as the initial correspondent noted. Longer programs, a growing expectation of postdoc time, and all the other habits that delay the age at which someone can first expect to draw a salary– those are particular burdens in our social world. (And they make the academy a much worse route to social mobility than, say, law, where the smart undergrad can do well on the LSATs, go to a good law school, and be earning a good living by age 25 or so).

    And the cultural capital barriers are part of our social world, too– and they should draw our attention to "class" in a way that's not just about wealth. A large proportion of academics are children of academics– not wealthy, perhaps, but to the manner born. That, too, shapes academic competitions, and makes it very important for graduate schools and advisors to offer professionalization training for all.

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  45. Justin D'Ambrosio

    While a couple of commenters have already raised this point, I thought it might be worth reiterating because I've found it so salient in my experience as a graduate student.

    One of the biggest challenges for a student from a working-class family who attempts to enter academia seems to be the lack of a monetary safety net. Without any support from one's family, it is often difficult for a student to find enough money for even basic needs. These are the moments when I find it hardest to justify a long course of study, that is typically fiscally unrewarding, and I would imagine many students from modest backgrounds feel similarly. What is worse is that these times arise most often during periods of academic pressure when a student is unable to work, and such times are frequent for any student attempting to enter academia.

    This is what I find to be the most pressing problem, and the one which pushes many students with interest in academic philosophy away and onto other paths. Undergraduates from working-class families attempting to enter academia have no support system, and have no prospects of immediate remuneration upon admission to a graduate school. While an undergraduate may be very well-qualified for admission to a PhD program, I have met many who are forced, out of financial necessity (often from pressing debts, and other times from the simple necessity of putting food on the table), to change career paths.

    I don't have any sure solutions to such problems, but I do think that focusing on students from working-class families, particularly undergraduates, who are attempting to forge their way into academia, is a good place to start. Perhaps special scholarships or loans could be afforded students who are doing high-caliber work, and are attempting to gain admission to PhD programs.

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  46. Michael McIntyre

    Reading through these comments, it strikes me how lucky I was, and how much harder it is to be lucky these days. My own class location is not the easiest to pinpoint. Certainly my parents came from a working class background, though by the time I went to college my father, an auto mechanic, owned his own shop, with a handful of employees. So, if you chop up the world as John Roemer does, that would make me the child of a small capitalist, but income stratification would put me far lower down the ladder, and in terms of cultural capital my family would certainly have fit into the working class milieu. In my high school, setting your sights high meant applying to one of the nearby state flagship schools. I looked farther only because my PSAT scores got me deluged with catalogs, and I still don't know for sure why Washington University ended up on my list (which included only three schools). I was certainly lucky in starting my undergraduate education in 1976 rather than today. Wash U was not nearly so rich at the time, and it seemed to recruit as an Ivy League safety valve school on the east coast but as a first option among midwesterners. My parents made significant, but not extraordinarily onerous, contributions to my education, which was mostly paid for by grants and scholarships. My NDSL loans after four years amounted to a whopping $3,300 or so, paid off at 3% interest at a rate of $31.39 per month. And, luckily for me, Wash U's pedigree went up significantly during my years between undergraduate and graduate school. So, when I applied to the University of Chicago, I had the good fortune to have gone to an undergraduate institution with a good enough pedigree, and to be uncannily good at multiple choice tests. Chicago (and later an outside fellowship) gave me enough money to get through graduate school without more debt. I was also lucky in the very self-consciously anti-Ivy-League cultural ethos of the place. Faculty would proudly proclaim that at the U of C no one cared about how you held your teacup. What they did care about was intellectual aggression (which raised at the time real issues of gender bias in my department, where for awhile Susanne Rudolph was the sole woman). But, for someone who was male and a bit rough around the edges, it was a good fit. There were still certain disadvantages related to class background. I really didn't understand the gamesmanship involved in the profession until years after I graduated, and I oscillated between a sense of being a fraud and oozing contempt for those to the manor born. But looking back, I still have difficulty believing my good fortune.

    Could I do the same thing today? Maybe, but looking at my children's roads, I can't help but think that I would have had a rougher time of it. My ex and I scraped together the money to send my oldest daughter to Lab School, and she's now studying philosophy and comparative literature at the U of C, but working 30+ hours per week during term to make ends meet, and accumulating far more debt than I had to. But her younger siblings have to make do with our depleted resources, and attend public schools. (Dalton Conley, please take note!) They, I suspect, are going to have a much tougher time getting the undergraduate pedigree their sister will have. And this with one parent a professor and the other a schoolteacher, each drawing a decent, though by no means lavish, salary. What chance, today, would someone have with the resources I had in 1976? A chance far slimmer, I fear, than those available a generation ago.

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  47. Cara Spencer

    We should also consider the role MA programs play in admissions to PhD programs. These programs are supposed to allow students to compensate for a less than excellent undergraduate background in philosophy. If "less than excellent" means that the student didn't take much philosophy, or they did but for some reason didn't really excel, then that's fine. But if it also means that the student really excelled in their philosophy classes, but didn't happen to go to a college with a well-regarded department, then that's not fine. If students from non-elite universities have to do (and in many cases pay for) an MA to be admitted to a PhD program, but students from elite universities can skip that step and start a PhD with just a BA, then that looks to me like a barrier to entry into the profession. It looks like students from non-elite universities need to get an extra credential, the MA, that other applicants don't need.

    I realize that MA programs can provide a route for students not from privileged backgrounds to enter the profession, and that's good. But we should also look at the possibility that they can be barriers to entry.

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  48. Rob Wilson

    There are a couple of points I want to concur with, and underscore, and a few that I haven't seen made (though I may have missed them). Many of those writing here have provided examples of the small and not-so-small barriers that class erects to academic success, starting with admission. But like Ken Taylor perhaps, I'm inclined to be cautiously optimistic about how effects of class can dissipate over time, at least once you get to a certain point. I grew up in the outback and in Perth, Western Australia. My father was a blacksmith and I didn't even really know what a university was until the last 6 months of high school. I distinguished myself at university not so much by grades, but by the noticeably high number of swear words I used at university social events, noticeable even by the very high standards set by Australians. But there was a lot of support from faculty at my institution and, picking up on a point by Student Dec 1 12.12pm, two of them (Michael Tooley and Graham Priest) were known by those doing admissions at grad schools in the US I applied to. In fact, that I was the "student Tooley recommended" was the definite description (relative to context) that two faculty members used to pick me out; no another aspect of the application was remarked on, ever. But rather than see this as a way in which class counts, one step removed, as 12.12 seems to, I see this as a way in which class gets discounted as you move on. So long as you don't piss too many people off, along the way, which has it's own class dimension.

    One point I didn't notice being made was the interaction between class and other demographic factors. Ken's comment registers a class-race interaction, but the one that jumps out at me is a class-gender interaction. I don't know a very high proportion of academics who are working class (I know plenty who count themselves as working class, however, because their parents were accountants, teachers, or small business people …), but I know very very few female academics in this category, perhaps as a proportion, about one-half to one-quarter as many as males. Others sensitive to class must surely have noticed this, unless my experience is unusual, though I've never heard anyone discuss the effects that the skewing here has on dynamics within departments, conferences, etc..

    The other point is that there is an upside to lack of class privilege: if you get through, you're more likely to crank it up. In my high school, 6 out of 70 graduates went to university; all of us have done much better than the average university student (all finished–in Australia, many do not–and we've all jumped through more hoops). I think basically we've all been slightly terrified of not being as good as others, or of failing, and so have worked our arses off pretty much non-stop. Just as women do, given the internalized sexism in the profession.

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  49. Robert Johnson

    If my family is any kind of indicator, one source of pressure that working class students have that middle and upper class students don't necessarily have quite as much is pressure to study something very 'practical'. It is very difficult for many who find themselves drawn to the humanities to explain to their parents why they are spending resources pursuing a degree that doesn't have an obvious connection to more money. My parents' expressions of total incomprehension of what I was doing were like drum beats to me. I'm sure that's not just a working class experience, but it would be unsurprising if it was more widespread among people such as me, and was one factor that depresses underclass representation in academia. It takes a lot of luck and determination to finish a degree and get a job in academia. It's very hard to keep up one's resolve, and one's parents' attitudes can wear away at that.

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  50. Rachel

    Another three cents worth:

    1. From what I gather, the elite US institutions are (unlike Oxbridge) deliberately *regressive* as regards class mobility at the undergraduate level, in that the number of 'legacy' admissions, 'development' admissions, and athletic admissions for sports played mainly at fancy high schools totally swamps any effect from class- (or race-)based affirmative action. I'd be interested to know whether anyone here thinks this is defensible; if not, it seems to me that faculty at those institutions have a responsibility to complain about it as loudly as they can. (Yes, pedigree should count for less; but it's very unlikely ever to count for zero, so we should do our best to make it track actual ability.)

    2. On graduate admissions committees I have sometimes felt compelled to reject applications from (almost certainly working-class) students who seemed basically bright, but who had done a messy undergrad degree (often not a proper philosophy major) somewhere pretty weak and then an MA or second BA somewhere only slightly less weak, and still didn't really know how to write a philosophy paper. I felt bad about doing it, but the necessary faith that the disadvantaged student can catch up is harder to summon at each step up the ladder. I infer that one thing the profession needs is more, better, and above all better funded MA programs.

    3. What Matt Smith and Lisa Shapiro said, and then some: an undergraduate transcript without class averages is not a serious source of information, regardless of the pedigree of the institution.

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