Monday, April 28, 2008 - Posts
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Depressing findings from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Even though well-off colleges say they're trying hard to recruit low-income students, the numbers are going in the wrong direction. At the 75 schools with endowments over $500 million, the share of students who received Pell grants, which means they come from families that make less than $40,000 a year, dipped from 14.3 percent in 2004-05 to 13.1 percent in 2006-07. The trend is the same at the 39 tippy-top richest schools: 19.6 percent of students there were low-income in 2004-05, compared with 18 percent two years later.
The time frame under study is short, to be sure. But it also matches a period in which colleges have been talking up class diversity, and in which the idea has been floated as an alternative to race-based affirmative action. The falling numbers show that well-qualified poor applicants don't submit applications in droves to the well-endowed schools, and that the schools haven't really figured out yet how to find them. A few campuses have shown that it's possible to improve at that task. The Chronicle noted schools that are exceptions to the rule because they have posted small gains: Amherst, Holy Cross, Williams, Princeton, and the Universities of Richmond and Texas at Austin. At Smith, 25 percent-plus students are low-income; at UCLA, 35 percent. What are those schools doing differently?
That's the big question, I think. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts, but my own sense is that the answer is not the big feel-good initiative that Harvard and Yale announced this winter: expanding financial aid so that it covers families that earn up to $180,000 or $200,000 a year. As this persuasive NYT op-ed points out, most schools don't have the money to give aid to upper-middle-class families (I hope that $200,000 a year still gets you into that category) as well as truly needy ones. And so, as the op-ed by former Columbia Dean Roger Lehecka points out, the Harvard and Yale move "sets an example that is likely to make it even harder for low-income students to attend the best college for which they are qualified." So forget Harvard and Yale—among the private colleges, what's Smith doing? Or Princeton or Williams or Holy Cross or Amherst?
(Cross-posted at Convictions.)
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I sympathize with Hanna's request that Miley Cyrus put on a robe, but I have lower expectations for magic in the Magic Kingdom. With no children or grandchildren in the Miley Cyrus target demographic, I nearly missed the Hannah Montana phenomenon except for the unavoidable Disney juggernaut marketing of former country singer Billy Ray Cyrus’ offspring. (I am reminded that "Achy Breaky Heart" was a hit in 1992.) To me the come-hither Miley VF shots seem relatively tame and designed to widen the teenager’s fan base. (The pictures of Miley with her boyfriend don’t look any more provocative than photos any 15-year-old with a boyfriend might post on MySpace.) I was more annoyed to see the spin obliquely blames the 15-year-old's semi-nude Vanity Fair exposure on photographer Annie Leibovitz, a professional who has been coaxing photography subjects since Mick Jagger was a boy. The story reminded me of the February Lindsay Lohan photo spread in New York magazine where the Disney Parent Trap star (and more recently rehab darling) replicated Marilyn Monroe's famous 1962 “boozy nudes.” When she was criticized, Lohan publicists hinted photographer Bert Stern, who shot both the original Monroe and Lohan re-creation sessions, was to blame.
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I am about to enter into the realm I never imagined I'd find myself, the parental equivalent of the liberal being mugged. In this case, the mugger is Miley Cyrus, or maybe Disney, or Vanity Fair—whoever is most responsible for that photo of a topless 15-year old Cyrus barely holding the bedsheets up. Which is actually less off-putting than the recently leaked photo of her slithering around with her boyfriend. Or BBF, or FWB, or whatever.
Here's my problem with the phenomenon. Yes, teenage starlets burn this way. But don't they usually do it in stages? In my memory, the Olsen twins were innocent child stars and then they slowly morphed into tabloid fodder. This seems the natural sexual-awareness trajectory of anyone their age, only somewhat exaggerated. Now there are shows we all consider clean: Hannah Montana and High School Musical, for example. And by any watchdog's standards they are: no sex, no exposed flesh, no cursing. This ensures that children as young as 6 or 7(such as my daughter) will know all about them and love them. She doesn't see anything bad. She just listens to lots of teenagers sing and dance and go on and on about who's dating whom and who's in love and who broke up, etc. They are innocent and knowing at the same time. I can't easily say to her: Don't watch that, you don't want to be like that underage sexpot, do you? Because the actors look as cute and innocent as the Teletubbies. But something about all this sanitized high school chatter leaves me uneasy. Why does a 6-year old need to know so much about dating and breaking up?
I can anticipate the objections to this argument: Americans are always fetishizing childhood innocence. They need to imagine their children as clean and gossamer-white in order to protect them. And there is an element of truth in this. I read that popular Lin Burress blog on this subject which was quoted in the New York Times and it made me cringe. (She complains about 5-year olds trying on make-up. Who could read anything dirty in that?)
So I guess, as a parent, I'm just begging for less confusion. When I was a pre-teen in the '70s, the culture was probably more sexed up. I was a little younger than Miley Cyrus when I saw Fame. That was probably about as much bare flesh as I could handle. But it seemed distant and dangerous to me. The actors who played high school kids back then looked practically as old as my parents, or at least my uncle. There was no confusing them with my (relatively) squeaky clean schoolmates.
Late breaking news. Cyrus has now apologized for the photos, calling them "inappropriate" and "silly," See, there she goes again: "Silly?" What 15-year-old uses the word "silly?" That's a 6-year-old pander for sure.
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