I read a blog post last week (I'd like to link to it, but can't remember which blog it was), talking about how progressive educators and activists have been willing to gain access to colleges for those who traditionally had no access (i.e., minorities and women) at the expense of the ability to frame the purpose of college and education more generally. Sure, in the 70's there really was more access for more people, for a brief period of time. But in the meantime, this blogger argued, we let the rhetoric about "college is for getting jobs" take over. It may have seemed like a good trade off at the time, but it hasn't turned out to be. College access has diminished, and will probably continue to do so, as state universities get privatized and tuition is raised, while the idea of "college for all" is still held out as the panacea for poverty (and leads to the draconian testing regime that is No Child Left Behind).

I've been thinking about that over the past few days, and I think it's right. I think it's easy to get caught up in a particular battle and to forget that in doing so you're losing the war. We spend a lot of time discussing the achievement gap, and how all children have to be college ready, etc. etc. I get caught up in that rhetoric because to me, college was absolutely the single most important time in my life. My education saved me from a rough family situation, taught me to think for myself, and gave me a sense of the strength of my mind and the diversity of things it could learn. (I should mention at this point that I went, not to one of the much vaunted Ivies, but to Brooklyn College, which I continue to think is one of the best schools in the country). Learning is one of the greatest pleasures of my life, and that's partly because of my college professors, who taught me to explore. I feel really lucky to have had the experience I did, and I want it for all my students. I want it for them especially because I know (no matter what the pundits like to tell you) that intellectual capacity is no respecter of class lines, and I want for the students who, like me, are stuck in rough families and bad schools, to have that epiphany-ohmigod, so this is what it's like. So this is what I can really do. That's what I think college is really for.

But then I realize that buying into that goal without some qualification is a problem, and it's a widespread one. When we talk about increasing college access for students in poverty, we tacitly buy into the assumption that only people with white collar jobs and post-secondary educations deserve to make a living wage. We take it for granted that you can't make a living wage with a GED or even a high school diploma. We take it for granted that people working in the service sector are hourly workers who are paid very little, don't have dependable salaries, and don't have benefits. When we say that college lifts students out of poverty, what we are really saying is that it's natural for the non-college educated to remain in poverty. One reason that's a problem is illustrated in this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Notice how the second largest number of jobs over the next 7 years is projected to be in the service industry. , that means that a large proportion of US workers will be working in the service sector for below a living wage. Even if the entire population of the US went to college, this would still be true (it would just mean that some of the college educated would end up in the service sector). As long as we're not fighting for a living wage and benefits for every US worker, no matter their education, we're NOT lifting people out of poverty. We're just allowing the issue of poverty to be framed in a way that ignores the blatant disregard in this country for workers' rights, and the government's responsibility to act for the good of all.

It was not always thus. Back when there were still union manufacturing jobs in this country, you could have a decent job without a high school diploma. When that was still true, I think the idea of college being possible for everyone was what it should be-the idea that those who are smart and interested in certain kinds of jobs should be able to prepare for and get them, no matter what their class background. Without the existence of well paid blue collar jobs, though, the idea of college has become, for students, a matter of financial survival, and for pols, it's become a way of covering for the fact that business and government are collaborating to create rising numbers of below-living wage jobs, and rising numbers of workers without options. I do want all students to be able to go to college, because a good college education educates you, and I think that's valuable. But we need to move away from acting as if any college education enables you to support yourself. It's not necessarily true, and even if it were, it doesn't make it OK to throw the non-college educated under the bus.