Would paying the poor for doing well in school solve some of the poverty crisis?

Great Debates
21

:dubious:

So because you can’t go to Harvard you are stuck to a life of second rate education? That doesn’t sound right. There are plenty of schools between Ivy League and State Colleges and who says that a state college is a bad education anyway?

Secondly, didn’t you go to High School in California or am I confusing you with someone else. What you have stated is not true for California because of its excellent community college program. In California, all units taken at a community college cost $20/unit. They have online, early morning, night, summer, and weekend classes to help students who have to work fulltime. In addition, the government helps you out if you are low income. I make about ~15k/year and the govt covers my community college except for $15/semester. They also have programs where low income students can rent books from the school or free, get special housing, and get tax free jobs on campus that start at $8.50/hour.

It’s also very easy to transfer to a UC or a CSU out of a California community college. I’ve not once gone to a guidance counselor and I’ve already been accepted into UCs. They have a website which lists all of the majors offered by UCs/CSUs and the prep course work necessary at each community college to be accepted for transfer. Some of the UCs/CSUs don’t even ask you to complete all of the course work before transferring. I slacked off a lot in my Junior and Senior year of high school and left the first college I attended with a 1.7 GPA. The UCs/CSUs care more about how you did in community college than in high school and you can take honors classes while at cc.

I don’t know about transferring to Harvard, but I do know community college students who went to other Ivy Leagues such as Cornell and Columbia. I applied to Columbia myself and based on what the Columbia rep told me, I have a pretty good chance of getting in (won’t know for maybe another month). If not, I’m hardly doomed. I’ve already been accepted into UCSD (#38 in US News and World Reports) and UCD (#47). I did not apply to, because of lack of my major or more core requirements, but probably could have been accepted into UCLA (#26) and UCBerkeley (#21). In addition to Columbia (#9) classmates of mine are going or have gone to USC (#27), UCI (#44), UCSB (#47), and others that I have forgotten.

As for paying for college after transferring, the govt already helps with that. UCD and UCSD have already given me a rough estimate for financial aid (and it will only go down) and the absolute max I will have to pay out of pocket total for my BS or BA is $18k. That’s with no scholarships, loans, work studies, etc. Just grants either by the govt or by by the school. I can probably get that number lowered and I’ve already been offered loans where the interest doesn’t kick in until after graduation. That 18k amount covers everything and gives me ~$850/month to spend on room and living expenses at Davis and ~$1000/month at San Diego. I have a friend at Davis who spends $650/month and lives nicely so I’m not concerned about needing more money than that.

I wish more states had community college programs like California. I had to move from Ohio because it was just taking too long to attend school and work there due to the much higher price. I think that would help the poverty crisis somewhat.

As for paying younger students, if it could be tested on a smaller scale, I’d be interested in the results. I tend to think that it wouldn’t work because when individuals are being paid for something instead of doing it for personal reasons, their attitude towards it changes and not normally for the better. I think that it would cause a lot of cheating and maybe only a bit more learning. Teachers might be pressured more by students for the higher grades so the students can have more money to spend on whatever rather than the students working harder because they want to learn. I don’t think education should be treated like a job.

22

AP teacher in an “urban” school here. Poor kids absolutely can succeed in an AP course. Claiming that they won’t pass them so why offer them is like the pre-Title IX arguement that there is no point in funding girls sports since they won’t play. One the classes are avalible, the kids start taking them. Every child, poor or not, needs to have the option to take a full courseload of challenging courses. Every year, we do send “at-risk” kids to the best school in the country–this year we have a Serbian refugee accepted into 8 Ivys and MIT, Stanford, Cal-tech and a bunch of others–no way she would have had that chance without haveing already passed a bunch of AP exams to demonstrate that she is up to the course load. And being a little obsessive about applications.

23

kimera, California’s community colleges are excellent and are the absolute perfect thing for many people. They have certainly done a lot in battling poverty.

However, in my experience, young people just out of high school from disadvantaged backgrounds going to community colleges in their home towns have a lot of difficulties.

One reason is that the negative influences that were there in high school are still there. Since community colleges tend to have a “commuter” aptmosphere, chances are most of your friends will not be college students, but rather the same losers you hung out with in high school who didn’t move on to college. It’s easy to see your friends that arn’t in school making money, buying all kinds of cool stuff, starting families, etc. and wonder why you are still hanging out in school broke. And your friends arn’t going to be living and academic lifestyle or make concessions for yours.

And then, f you have family members or friends that are involved in bad stuff (drugs, crime, general drama, etc.) you are still going to have to deal with that, too. “Living at home with the 'rents” is one thing when you live in a typical suburban family, but it can be quite another when you live in a situation that is negative towards getting an education.

Finally, it’s a lot easier to drop classes, etc. when you only have fifteen dollars a unit invested. All college kids are going to screw around and have their share of risky times and temptations. “I am going to get kicked out of college and owe a million dollars for a degree I never even got” is a pretty strong motivator not to let that go to far. I think it’s a lot different for older students or for students with a clear plan, but a lot of younger students have a hard time taking community college seriously because it is so easy to drop in and out of classes.

Of course an exceptional individual can overcome these things, but we arn’t talking about exceptional individuals. We are talking about how we can improve the prospects for real life students facing real life battles with a real chance of losing. Right now there are kids failing in life that would be suceeding if they were in any better high school. That is what I am worried about.

Going to a four year college offers some pretty distinct advantages to young students from poor backgrounds. They benefit from a academic oriented atmosphere, which they may be experiencing for the first time. They benefit from having friends who are students, and who don’t know anything else and arn’t involved in bad stuff, and who have connections that will eventually help them in the job market. They benefit from being away from toxic elements in their life. In essence, going to a four year college gives young people a chance to “jump social classes” that they might not get again.

Community colleges are great for some people. But I’m not okay with bright hard working children from poor backgrounds ONLY having the choice to go to a community college. It may not be a second rate education, but to someone who is bright and hardworking and knows they would be somewhere else if they had gone to any other high school, it’s certainly going to feel that way. And that is going to affect how seriously they take all of their education. Personally, I think the whole "good college/bad college’ system is BS, but it’s there and while it’s there it is going to affect people. And while it is affecting people, I think it is something we need to address. And I think “giving poor students the choice popularly considered better” is a good way to start addressing it.

24

Not only that, but people who feel they have no hope of ever escaping their situation, that it’s as shitty as it gets, they often turn to what they consider a small price to pay to keep them living (or not doing something really, really destructive). Being concerned about cancer is possibly something in a far off distance that they might not believe they have. Smoking (or whatever) may well ward off what they feel or the more immediate concerns involving their life; like severe depression or falling back into alcoholism or losing your job or even getting temporary relief from your own private hell. I’m sure that they see the trade-off as negligible and somewhat (or more) necessary.

On topic, I agree that anything that will help someone at a disadvantage, for whatever reason, can only be a good thing. There’s always people who will bemoan that they’ve been unfairly or unjustly left out of the ‘rewards.’ We’ll always have those trying to usurp the system. I’m assuming that tweaks and kinks along the process are inevitable too. Finally, we can have both… incentives and more reduction of the problems that create these circumstances in the first place. However, just like the issue I talked about above, that’s more of a long-term goal than many desire.

Also, if money is the plan, I feel that now is better than later, although encouragement to go to college will always be a plus. Unfortunately, folks in this situation might need the help, at the moment, to continue to just survive.

My less than .02 cents on the matter.

25

I’m not kidding you. I agree that a college education is necessary for many high-paying jobs, but not all. You can’t count on a juicy factory job for the rest of your life, but you can train to be a tradesman or join the military or go to a 2-year occupational school. All of those jobs pay enough to live on comfortably in most of the country. And few to none of them are reasonable options if you don’t finish high school.

The poor kids who might be most helped by a little financial incentive to get decent grades are the ones who are likely to drop out. Just getting them to graduate from high school is a success. My point was that by restricting the incentive to college-bound kids, then all those marginal kids who aren’t making it in high school, or who know that they have to get a job to support their family after high school will not be helped.

26

The problem I have with it is values-based. There was a time when people did well as a matter of pride. I understand that unrelenting poverty and oppression result in the destruction of even rudimentary self-esteem. So how do you transfer the incentive from financial to self-esteem? Don’t we (parents, usually, but if they’re incapable, then the rest of us) have a duty to teach these kids to just take pride in themselves and their work?

Bear in mind, I don’t mean to imply financial incentives are a bad idea – But I do think that at some point fundamental self-esteem must be instilled, and kids should learn to get good grades because of pride in achievement for it’s own sake.

27

even sven, I’ve seen a lot of kids from poor backgrounds change practically overnight at a community college so I will have to disagree. There maybe some students that end up like that, I do see a lot of kids who do little work and screw around mostly but those tend to be the rich kids, not the poor ones.

I went to a large, 4 year first and it was disastrous for me. The class sizes were huge, I didn’t develop close connections with any faculty members because of the amount of research and students they were teaching, with the expense of the classes I felt a lot of pressure to take more units than I could handle, and so forth. There were also problems where, due to the expense, I wanted to graduate in 4 years so I’d take the classes necessary to graduate even if I didn’t feel sufficiently prepared for them. At a community college, I can take all the prep classes I desire and I can also explore the fields I am interested without worrying about the units counting against my total.

The smaller class size and dedicated teachers means that I have a more one on one education than at a larger school. The teachers here (mine may be an exception but I think the smaller class size and duty to education instead of research makes professors more involved) are not afraid to pull a student aside and encourage him/her to take a more active role in their education. There are students who attend my college who are homeless that one of the professors here helps out by setting them up with P.O. boxes and picking one up for school when he broke his arm and couldn’t bike.

If a student is dedicated to college, then it won’t matter as much for him or her if people they know are temporarily making a lot. I know it didn’t matter to me. Plus, with the low cost of education, you can live pretty nicely on very little. I have a very nice apartment, plenty of toys, and spend extra on fun things. A community college student is less in debt than a four year student unless that 4 year got some very nice scholarships. I don’t know a lot of 4 year students who can take 3 days off and go spend $500+ on a music concert without it breaking the bank.

If your high school classmates are distracting you, then you move away and live with roommates. Most of my classmates who are serious about their education do. Only a few live with their parents. Most of my classmates are pretty serious about their education, and since they are typically are putting themselves through school, they work hard. I feel more challenged at a community college where I know my competitors due to a smaller class size than at a large college where you feel like a face in the crowd. There are students who sign up for classes and then drop out at a higher percentage than at a 4 year college but sometimes you need to. At a community college there is less pressure to take that class even if you aren’t prepared for it or are too busy with other factors. I myself have dropped classes when I realized I needed more bio or chemistry to do well.

You don’t have to be an exceptional student to do well in community college. Many of my classmates are (and now go to top 25 schools because of it), but I’ve also seen a lot of average students get ahead. Besides, you talked about a student who, no matter how hard they worked, couldn’t get into Ivy League. That simply isn’t true.

I just don’t think this is true at all. I was very depressed about my prospects for college until I discovered California’s community college system. The UCs say that they accept transfers first over freshman and, if you take a bit to look at the CCs programs, you can hear about transfers to Ivy Leagues and such. I’ve never felt held back by going to CC. Yeah, it’s annoying when people rag on Community Colleges but I’ve been accepted into better schools than most of the people who I know who rag on CCs have!

Look, a kid from a poorer school probably doesn’t have the necessary background to get into Harvard. Being a top student in a shitty school is a lot easier than being a good student at a harder school. I know, I’ve done both. The CC experience shows that they can handle college level work much better than High School transcripts can. And since two years have already passed, the colleges are more likely to give good scholarships and financial aid. Berkeley will accept a lot of people with grades from a community college that they won’t accept from high schoolers.

We should lower the stigma of community colleges, put more money into strengthening their programs, and spend more time showing students how it can be a step up rather than a step back.