The Upwardly Mobile Barista
April 22, 2015 10:04 AM Subscribe
When it comes to college, the central challenge for most Americans in the 21st century is not going; it’s finishing. Thirty-five million Americans now have some college experience but no degree.
Amanda Ripley in The Atlantic follows a group of Starbucks employees taking advantage of the corporation's partnership with Arizona State University, and discovers some of the reasons why so few low-income students graduate on time, or ever get a degree at all.
The Upwardly Mobile Barista.
If I take a survey of some of the more brash, in-your-face students of the local large state university*, I don't see the Right Stuff to graduate. These people either should perhaps think of alternatives to the university, either a pre college program, or (what else is there, these days?). When I applied to uni, I had no real idea why, it's just what you did, because: America. I don't think things have changed?
* The university that I myself attended, and did not graduate from
posted by alex_skazat at 10:18 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
* The university that I myself attended, and did not graduate from
posted by alex_skazat at 10:18 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is a fairly damning indictment of the higher education system: Simply put, many Americans fail to finish college, because many colleges are not designed to be finished. They are designed to enroll students, yes. They are built to garner research funds and accrue status through rankings and the scholarly articles published by faculty. But those things have little to do with making sure students leave prepared to thrive in the modern economy.
Well, except that this isn't the issue the reporter's researching--that's just trotting out some "everybody says this so it must be true" common opinion. And it's really not true. Every campus I know of, including my own, is fretting away about how to get "average time to degree" down and "overall completion rates" up and so on. Funding often follows majors (look at the demise of European language departments) pretty directly, in fact. Enrolling large numbers and having them drop out without degrees is nobody's idea of a good business model except at the skeevy for-profit universities--which are entirely outside the realm of "status through rankings and...scholarly articles."
To me, the really interesting takeaway from the article--in terms of the subject the author actually was researching--is how genuine (so far) the Starbucks program seems to be:
Well, except that this isn't the issue the reporter's researching--that's just trotting out some "everybody says this so it must be true" common opinion. And it's really not true. Every campus I know of, including my own, is fretting away about how to get "average time to degree" down and "overall completion rates" up and so on. Funding often follows majors (look at the demise of European language departments) pretty directly, in fact. Enrolling large numbers and having them drop out without degrees is nobody's idea of a good business model except at the skeevy for-profit universities--which are entirely outside the realm of "status through rankings and...scholarly articles."
To me, the really interesting takeaway from the article--in terms of the subject the author actually was researching--is how genuine (so far) the Starbucks program seems to be:
As of early January, 87 percent of the first class of Starbucks students had registered for the spring semester at Arizona State, including every employee named in this story. In the turbulent world of online learning, that is considered a good success rate. (It’s three percentage points higher than Arizona State’s overall online retention rate during the same period.) In addition, another 585 Starbucks employees had enrolled, bringing the current class to 1,500.posted by yoink at 10:20 AM on April 22, 2015 [13 favorites]
Can you clarify what you mean, alex_skazat?
posted by easter queen at 10:35 AM on April 22, 2015
posted by easter queen at 10:35 AM on April 22, 2015
Yeah, this Monday I got out of a departmental meeting where the number one topic and goal addressed was "What can we do to increase retention?" as part of a campus-wide initiative. And we aren't even a department focused on academics. I'd say that the administration is obsessed with retention and graduation rates, and there's only so much we can do in the first place.
posted by happyroach at 10:49 AM on April 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 10:49 AM on April 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
I remember having the hardest time finding anyone in my university to help me plan a course schedule that would guarantee that I fulfilled all the requirements for graduation. Nobody in my actually department (Computer Science) seemed to have any clue how that worked or who made the final decisions about whether your got to graduate or not. There was an advising group for the school of Art and Sciences but they had no way to know when any particular course was going to be offered in the future and the CS department refused to ever give them any schedule so as a student I had no way to know when I should plan to take any specific class. I ended up graduating six months later than I'd planned just because two required classes were only offered once every two years.
posted by octothorpe at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2015 [13 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2015 [13 favorites]
Simply put, many Americans fail to finish college, because many colleges are not designed to be finished.
If this was the case, then colleges would explain the variance in graduation rates. But they don't. Class and income do.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:18 AM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
If this was the case, then colleges would explain the variance in graduation rates. But they don't. Class and income do.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:18 AM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah I tried some "online only" classes at my local community college. It still required making my way to campus for tests. It still required large blocks of time in the evening to watch what was basically a lecture set to Powerpoint. I had a "mandatory orientation" where they spent three hours trying to figure out how to run a web browser so they could show us how to run a web browser and it cost me a full day of work. My "advisor" basically just highlighted things in the sample degree plan but couldn't tell me when they were offered or how I should plan around it. And I got the vibe that even in the classes for working adults they were still surprised we weren't 18 year olds with jobs and lives that couldn't just pop down to campus to solve issues. Fortunately I had a professional job where I COULD just pop down to campus to solve issues, if I'd still been working retail it would've been totally unmanageable.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:39 AM on April 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:39 AM on April 22, 2015 [5 favorites]
Cost, average debt load and graduation rate are all key aspects of the new college ratings introduced by the Obama administration- it's no surprise that many schools are looking at improving their retention and graduation rates.
posted by cushie at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cushie at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Eh, I took my first online class a year ago for a programming language at a community college and it was great. It was all reading and exercises, only having to go to the school for the final. There was a webboard where you could ask questions and the teacher was very active there. I did all my homework at whatever hour I wanted as long as it was uploaded by the deadline. Of course the class management website where assignments and the webboard were located were six shades of ass, but everything else was fine. I could totally take a lot more classes that way.
posted by rhizome at 11:48 AM on April 22, 2015
posted by rhizome at 11:48 AM on April 22, 2015
Can you clarify what you mean, alex_skazat?
The local uni here is known as a party school. I don't think academics is the main reason why some people are here. Since after highschool, you're supposed to go to college, if you're not ready, or don't know what you're doing with your life, you go here and you start some liberal arts program. And you flounder. There's certainly some dedicated students, but they're not the underprivileged (many deleted expletives) that make my day incredible dangerous to live around. This minority is whom I'm speaking about. The word to use is: immature.
As a grissled "old man" now, the idea of spending so much money, without a goal seems ridiculous - why do it? Take the year off and go tramping around the world or something. It's what I should have done, too. Freshmen year in college for me was completely a waste of out-of-state tuition. I wasn't into partying, but the program was not for me.
I transferred to a private art school and found my home. I saw a different scenario, where many students started as Freshman, and the classes slowly dwindled down. Many people also went to art school not knowing what the heck they'd want to do. The difference may have been is that the art school would take anyone (anyone!) that paid the tuition. Retention was just bad. Very bad. Around half.
Having gone to a liberal arts state university, and a private art school, I've come to the conclusion the better thing I should have done would have been to not gone to school at all. I'm not a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Maybe gone to get an MBA, or studied accounting. I think I'm a bright enough person, but a community college program would have been stellar for me. I've taken a similar course at the local Alliance Français (for French, not accounting) and had one of the best school experiences I've ever had. To each his own, but Liberal Arts wasn't mine.
(and of course this is purely my humble point of view. My daily life is impacted greatly by the hoards of Animal House wannabes. I may be venting. I am venting)
posted by alex_skazat at 11:51 AM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
The local uni here is known as a party school. I don't think academics is the main reason why some people are here. Since after highschool, you're supposed to go to college, if you're not ready, or don't know what you're doing with your life, you go here and you start some liberal arts program. And you flounder. There's certainly some dedicated students, but they're not the underprivileged (many deleted expletives) that make my day incredible dangerous to live around. This minority is whom I'm speaking about. The word to use is: immature.
As a grissled "old man" now, the idea of spending so much money, without a goal seems ridiculous - why do it? Take the year off and go tramping around the world or something. It's what I should have done, too. Freshmen year in college for me was completely a waste of out-of-state tuition. I wasn't into partying, but the program was not for me.
I transferred to a private art school and found my home. I saw a different scenario, where many students started as Freshman, and the classes slowly dwindled down. Many people also went to art school not knowing what the heck they'd want to do. The difference may have been is that the art school would take anyone (anyone!) that paid the tuition. Retention was just bad. Very bad. Around half.
Having gone to a liberal arts state university, and a private art school, I've come to the conclusion the better thing I should have done would have been to not gone to school at all. I'm not a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Maybe gone to get an MBA, or studied accounting. I think I'm a bright enough person, but a community college program would have been stellar for me. I've taken a similar course at the local Alliance Français (for French, not accounting) and had one of the best school experiences I've ever had. To each his own, but Liberal Arts wasn't mine.
(and of course this is purely my humble point of view. My daily life is impacted greatly by the hoards of Animal House wannabes. I may be venting. I am venting)
posted by alex_skazat at 11:51 AM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]
As an academic adviser myself, I found all the glowing comments about outsourced advising, and marketing of customer-service models fairly terrifying. I kept wondering how much they got paid, what their benefits were. One of them, Nikki Nobish, had to drop out of college herself!
posted by feste at 3:31 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by feste at 3:31 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
These baristas remind me of my student helper. She has two teenagers and an elderly mother, is recovering from a serious automobile accident, and is working 10 hr a week for me, all while going to school full-time. It is very hard on her. She is always having to miss class because of her illnesses, her children's illnesses or her mother's illnesses. She has little time to study. She has a hard time concentrating because of her head injury. Yet she is extremely intelligent, hard-working, and fun to have around. She could do this job if she could graduate and if her transcripts reflected her actual ability. As it is, I'm really worried about her. Even if she manages to finish, will she be able to get a decent job?
posted by acrasis at 4:54 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by acrasis at 4:54 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
My full academic transcript includes time at a community college, a huge state U, a top rated liberal arts college, and an Ivy League university. It absolutely gets easier to stay in school, and to finish, the further up the academic food chain you go. Particularly in professional masters programs (where most people are paying serious money to attend and those tuition dollars are used to subsidize the department's more serious intellectual activities), people seem to magically pass their way through regardless of their ability or their effort.
Actually, the venue that transcends even the professional masters programs for blatant social promotion are the professional short courses -- the ones where your employer (if you are lucky) or you (if you are making questionable decisions) pays $1500 or more for a four day course, and where stringing together a series of those courses leads to some kind of certificate. I've taken a number of those, and I have yet to see anyone not get the completion certificate on the last day.
The struggles described in the article are, as noted above, tied intimately to class, and that is where the real repairs are needed.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:52 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
Actually, the venue that transcends even the professional masters programs for blatant social promotion are the professional short courses -- the ones where your employer (if you are lucky) or you (if you are making questionable decisions) pays $1500 or more for a four day course, and where stringing together a series of those courses leads to some kind of certificate. I've taken a number of those, and I have yet to see anyone not get the completion certificate on the last day.
The struggles described in the article are, as noted above, tied intimately to class, and that is where the real repairs are needed.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:52 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
I remember having the hardest time finding anyone in my university to help me plan a course schedule that would guarantee that I fulfilled all the requirements for graduation.
Whereas I was not even allowed to register for my first year in undergrad before I had met with an academic advisor, someone whose sole job was to ensure that students met their requirements to graduate. This wasn't at an elite university; this was at a middle-ranked and massive Canadian state university that just happened to put a lot of emphasis on teaching quality.
I still did have to petition to be let out of one of the breadth requirements, but that was because I was too clever and enrolled for an upper year social science that I was interested in rather than one of the intro courses that would automatically count for the breadth requirement.
posted by jb at 6:26 PM on April 22, 2015
Whereas I was not even allowed to register for my first year in undergrad before I had met with an academic advisor, someone whose sole job was to ensure that students met their requirements to graduate. This wasn't at an elite university; this was at a middle-ranked and massive Canadian state university that just happened to put a lot of emphasis on teaching quality.
I still did have to petition to be let out of one of the breadth requirements, but that was because I was too clever and enrolled for an upper year social science that I was interested in rather than one of the intro courses that would automatically count for the breadth requirement.
posted by jb at 6:26 PM on April 22, 2015
As others have mentioned, getting students to graduate 'on time' is absolutely a huge and prominent issue in US colleges and universities right now. Part of it is the changing Dept of Ed requirements, part of it is state money tied to graduate and retention rates, part of it is the zeitgeist and a sincere desire to graduate more students.
'On time' typically means within six years for the 'first time in college' students. As the academic advisor I spoke with Friday crankily noted, 'first time in college' students (aka 'traditional' students) are the only ones who count in most graduation metrics. College in six years is really hard to do when you've got a job, a family to support, a lengthy commute, and both money and cultural concerns.
Students at my institution are, compared to the national average, disproportionately first-generation college students, first-generation Americans, non-white, and poor. Our graduation rate is abysmal.
We have thrown money and staff time at the issue. Things like:
-setting up every student with an academic advisor and requiring them to go to advising before registering for classes every semester
-setting up clear degree plans listing out the semester that a given class must be taken in order to graduate in four years
-setting up every student with an informal coach who provides them with emails detailing how to get financial aid, get involved on campus, get help with study skills or mental health issues, etc.
-providing every entering freshman with a t-shirt that shows their graduation year (four years from the year they enter)
-encouraging students to enroll in a capped tuition, four year plan to graduate
-requiring every entering student (freshman or transfer alike) to attend orientation
That's just the top areas that come to mind and there are undoubtedly others. Like I said, lots of staff time and dollars at this issue. Graduation rate? Has barely budged.
posted by librarylis at 8:26 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
'On time' typically means within six years for the 'first time in college' students. As the academic advisor I spoke with Friday crankily noted, 'first time in college' students (aka 'traditional' students) are the only ones who count in most graduation metrics. College in six years is really hard to do when you've got a job, a family to support, a lengthy commute, and both money and cultural concerns.
Students at my institution are, compared to the national average, disproportionately first-generation college students, first-generation Americans, non-white, and poor. Our graduation rate is abysmal.
We have thrown money and staff time at the issue. Things like:
-setting up every student with an academic advisor and requiring them to go to advising before registering for classes every semester
-setting up clear degree plans listing out the semester that a given class must be taken in order to graduate in four years
-setting up every student with an informal coach who provides them with emails detailing how to get financial aid, get involved on campus, get help with study skills or mental health issues, etc.
-providing every entering freshman with a t-shirt that shows their graduation year (four years from the year they enter)
-encouraging students to enroll in a capped tuition, four year plan to graduate
-requiring every entering student (freshman or transfer alike) to attend orientation
That's just the top areas that come to mind and there are undoubtedly others. Like I said, lots of staff time and dollars at this issue. Graduation rate? Has barely budged.
posted by librarylis at 8:26 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
Problem is, the major problems that I see are people dropping out because they can't afford it any more, plus the usual things like people changing majors a lot or not being able to get into classes due to high enrollment. I'm a rare bird who did finish in four, but then again I took almost nothing that wasn't for one of my majors (I didn't soul search or change majors into wildly different things a lot) and I took summer school--oh yeah, and college was cheaper and had less people.
I do know that the magic words "graduating senior" will almost always get you a shit ton of leeway here to get what you want just so they can get you out. But yeah, most schools don't have the money to hold everyone's hand and give them all individual counselors to see whenever they need one.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:37 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
I do know that the magic words "graduating senior" will almost always get you a shit ton of leeway here to get what you want just so they can get you out. But yeah, most schools don't have the money to hold everyone's hand and give them all individual counselors to see whenever they need one.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:37 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
When I was in grad school, one of the undergrad majors -- I feel like it was economics or political science -- was very clear that it was not logistically possible to finish in 4 years because courses weren't offered often enough. (This was in the US; in undergrad in Quebec the government required all majors to be finishable in 3 years for local students who essentially did freshman year elsewhere.)
posted by jeather at 7:00 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jeather at 7:00 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
I highly recommend a book written by one of my grad school classmates, Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality by Elizabeth Armstrong, which is a rich ethnographic study of how a state university failed working-class women students as a path for upward mobility. She attributes a lot of the problems in retaining working-class students with how schools have been forced by reduced government support and other economic incentives to provide more amenities that primarily benefit students who are upper-middle class and above. She argues that schools have invested more in "the party path" (e.g., a hands-off approach to fraternities, easy classes for affluent students who party a lot, easy majors like "communications" and "tourism," more money for sports and gym facilities) than in "the mobility path" (e.g., giving working-class students the academic support needed to pass calculus or intro physics). The book is also interesting in how she views the hot-button issue of fraternity date rape culture as an economic stratification issue (e.g., the rapists don't target economically well-connected women or the girlfriends of fellow fraternity brothers) and how even fraternity date rape is part of the system of obstacles in the path of working-class mobility.
posted by jonp72 at 7:29 AM on April 23, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by jonp72 at 7:29 AM on April 23, 2015 [7 favorites]
Ha, I was on my way here to recommend Paying for the Party but jonp72 beat me to it. It's a very, very well done book that covers a lot of institutional problems that lead to working-class students having a much rougher time than middle and upper-middle-class counterparts. Granted, the book does focus primarily on large public universities rather than private institutions like the Ivies, but I found it really, really accurate to my university experience (which was at a similar institution, but not the one that gossip tells me Armstrong was working with).
posted by sciatrix at 7:42 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by sciatrix at 7:42 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
I can also testify that Elizabeth is not only a great scholar, but a genuinely nice person too. The book is very interesting in how she had to upgrade her wardrobe in order to get respect from her research subjects who viewed her as low status.
posted by jonp72 at 7:54 AM on April 23, 2015
posted by jonp72 at 7:54 AM on April 23, 2015
Most of the students who don't graduate shouldn't graduate: they lack the intellectual capacity or curiosity, or both, to earn a meaningful college degree. The real problem is that they shouldn't have been enrolled in the first place, but between the fecklessness of legislatures (who impose no suitability requirements upon taxpayer subsidies and loan guarantees) and the avarice of the colleges (who gladly cash the taxpayers' checks), they are enrolled anyway.
The correct policy approach is to permit / require employers to substitute job-related qualification exams and probationary policies for "any degree will do" college requirements, removing the largest perverse incentives; create a robust IQ and motivation screening requirement for taxpayer subsidy or guarantees and make sure that those who pass actually have the financial aid and class scheduling, etc. that they need; and ultimately making college available to non-traditional (age) students who were not college material at 18 who develop suitable motivation later on.
posted by MattD at 9:01 AM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
The correct policy approach is to permit / require employers to substitute job-related qualification exams and probationary policies for "any degree will do" college requirements, removing the largest perverse incentives; create a robust IQ and motivation screening requirement for taxpayer subsidy or guarantees and make sure that those who pass actually have the financial aid and class scheduling, etc. that they need; and ultimately making college available to non-traditional (age) students who were not college material at 18 who develop suitable motivation later on.
posted by MattD at 9:01 AM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Most of the students who don't graduate shouldn't graduate: they lack the intellectual capacity or curiosity, or both, to earn a meaningful college degree .
That is bullshit.
My husband teaches university. Some of his brightest, most intellectually curious students have been at risk of not finishing or taken longer to finish. It had nothing to do with their intelligence or their dedication and everything to do with needing to work 30+ hours per week to support themselves (and maybe their parents as well).
If it were intelligence and dedication, then finishing college wouldn't be linked to economic class so tightly. Unless you wish to argue that poor/working class students are just stupider and/or lazier?
posted by jb at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]
That is bullshit.
My husband teaches university. Some of his brightest, most intellectually curious students have been at risk of not finishing or taken longer to finish. It had nothing to do with their intelligence or their dedication and everything to do with needing to work 30+ hours per week to support themselves (and maybe their parents as well).
If it were intelligence and dedication, then finishing college wouldn't be linked to economic class so tightly. Unless you wish to argue that poor/working class students are just stupider and/or lazier?
posted by jb at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]
And for that matter: I have taught students at an elite university who were only mildly intelligent and not at all intellectually curious. They had no trouble finishing - well, except for the three plagiarists I had in one section. But I don't know what happened to them.
How were they different? They were at an institution where they had substantially more academic support than most non-elite schools, and even those who worked were limited in the number of hours they were allowed to work and were found positions on campus that were better paid and more understanding (of things like exam schedules) than a lot of off campus employers. (I know; I had a work study position when I was there).
As well: they were probably not hungry. 85% of the students at my undergrad uni were commuters who may have often missed meals because they forgot to pack one or had to stay longer on campus then they planned, and couldn't afford to buy food (like me). Whereas 95% of the students at the Ivy I taught at lived on campus and had access to all-you-can-eat dining halls.
posted by jb at 12:34 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
How were they different? They were at an institution where they had substantially more academic support than most non-elite schools, and even those who worked were limited in the number of hours they were allowed to work and were found positions on campus that were better paid and more understanding (of things like exam schedules) than a lot of off campus employers. (I know; I had a work study position when I was there).
As well: they were probably not hungry. 85% of the students at my undergrad uni were commuters who may have often missed meals because they forgot to pack one or had to stay longer on campus then they planned, and couldn't afford to buy food (like me). Whereas 95% of the students at the Ivy I taught at lived on campus and had access to all-you-can-eat dining halls.
posted by jb at 12:34 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not worrying about having food when I was hungry was the best luxury of my first year of graduate school.
posted by jb at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jb at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
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