The Inequality Machine - Paul Tough

What are the institutional and structural biases within the US academic system, and what is it like to experience them? Paul Tough's book answers these questions in great detail with moving anecdotes alongside sociology studies. I found The Inequality Machine to be an excellent, highly-readable complement to Julie R. Posselt's Equity in Science*, which is more rigorous and technical. I recommend that everyone in academia read this book.

To answer the opening questions above, Tough covers the entire process of getting a college education in the US, from high school and standardized testing through to feeling a sense of belonging through the culture shock that can often accompany first-generation or low-income students. By weaving stories with studies, the book feels accessible and entertaining. At the end, Tough presents his takeaway message: we as a society must fund free (or subsidized) public college education.

To me, the most delightful and inspiring part of this book was in Chapter VIII: Getting an A. In this chapter Tough covers the academic sense of shock experienced by students who were at the top of their high schools, then felt immense impostor syndrome or inability to succeed in university. Most of the chapter is focused on the amazing work of Uri Treisman, whose graduate studies at Berkeley and educational efforts at UT Austin are concerned with creating a sense of inclusion and belonging through freshman calculus, often seen as a "weed out" class for science and engineering across the US. I found it tremendously uplifting how Treisman's approach, including creating study groups and learning students' names, built a sense of community that significantly improved the experiences of students from underprivileged backgrounds.

I also enjoyed an interesting story about UT Austin covered in Chapter VI: Staying In, which discusses university graduation rates. Around 2012, UT had a four-year graduation rate of 40-50%, significantly lower than comparable public universities. This low graduation rate was caused in large part due to the Texas Top 10 Percent Law of 1997, which was passed as an alternative to race-based  (affirmative action) admissions. The law stipulated that the top 10% of graduating students at every Texas high school would automatically be admitted to all state-funded universities (this number has dropped to the top 6% as the number of people attending college has increased). Excitingly, the law worked, making Texas universities much more diverse. However, because few support structures were in place to help students from underprivileged backgrounds, Texas universities, and UT Austin in particular, had very low graduation rates. The chapter discusses, quite wonderfully, how UT has started turning this around with a "kitchen sink" approach to helping students at the highest risk of dropping out by providing a wide variety of support systems.

Now, let's return to the book's main message: everyone in the US should have their education funded (or subsidized!) by society. This was a key talking point for US Progressives, led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, during the 2020 presidential election cycle, but it is an old idea with historical precedent in the High School Movement and the GI Bill. The success of the message has led it (as a more moderate proposal) into President Joe Biden's current plan for the nation. To better understand opinions around the notion of free public college, I read a few articles:

• Against: The New Republic, Forbes, the American Enterprise Institute, Dissent (by the same author as the New Republic article), and National Review.
• For: Demos, The American Prospect, People's World, Current Affairs, Trade Schools (this article is ostensibly neutral), Dissent, and Free College Now.

The "against" arguments** appear to consist of a combination of the following ideas. First, they appeal to the "tragedy of the commons" wherein people overuse and undervalue a social resource that is freely available. Second, they claim that underprivileged people are less likely to attend college in the first place, so making it free will not create egalitarian benefits; poorer people are already eligible for subsidies and funding that make college nearly free. Third, and maybe most compelling, the student debt crisis is focused on people who are already able to attend college (at a price), and are therefore more likely to be able to pay off their college loans -- in other words, free college education would benefit an already privileged group. If my portrayals of these arguments seem like straw people, please note that they are echoed in Richard Vedder's Forbes article.

After reading The Inequality Machine, it is hard for me to agree with the "against" arguments, which all appear to be rooted in conservative economics. I believe the fundamental issue with these arguments is a premise that underprivileged people can and will go to college if it is freely available. But, Paul Tough's book clearly illustrates the structural and societal obstacles that individuals must often overcome to get to college, and then to stay in it. The cost of higher education is intertwined with institutional and societal biases that work against underprivileged people, so alleviating it would be one critical step towards a more equitable education system. Furthermore, by discussing free higher education, we also bring language and concepts from a broader discussion of social inequity into the fold. I would particularly recommend Tressie McMillan Cottom's Dissent article and Sparky Abraham's Current Affairs article for more on this point.

I'll also highlight how the "for" arguments take a different tack from directly addressing the "against" arguments. They claim that a higher level of public education is necessary for the nation's success (which is a tricky concept to measure) as technology progresses. As mentioned earlier, there is also historical precent, as college used to be free at times in US history, and higher levels of public education have been seen as public goods specifically to help the US keep up with technological progress. Most notably, the massive increase in US economic progress after World War II can be attributed in no small part to the GI Bill, which is a strong counterargument to the "against" claim that the US economy is built on people who have had to pay for college.

To conclude, I'll affirm that The Inequality Machine is an excellent read, and taught me quite a lot about  people's lived experiences very unlike my own in the US higher education system. The book contains extensive discussions of additional topics that I've not discussed here, such as standardized testing (the SAT and ACT), need-based financial aid, and the economic history of how college tuition and availability has changed in the past few decades. Finally, I'll note that, perhaps it is odd for an academic like myself to be questioning the foundations of academia***. However, as shown by Uri Treisman's example, one of the best ways to influence systemic change is to get deep within the system and directly engage with it.

* I discovered this interesting paper from Julie Posselt while writing this post. In case that link goes away some day, the paper is titled, Toward Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education: Constructing Merit and Diversity in PhD Admissions, published in the American Journal of Education 120.

** I started out reading and writing this post with a bias towards the "for" arguments. In large part, this is because I have started reading articles like this one or this one while considering the lens of (white) fragility. For example, when majority-group people complain about rights to free speech being attacked, in my experience, it often seems to stem more from a sense of discomfort with a more diverse and inclusive culture than from a well-reasoned and rational standpoint. The word "fragility" succinctly describes this discomfort and the associated emotional reactions. Unfortunately, calling someone fragile is not especially useful or constructive, because it brings focus immediately to the individual and makes it nearly impossible to consider the socialization in which that individual's perspective is rooted.

*** (20 Dec 2021) I'm currently reading High Price by Carl Hart, and came across this great quote by James Baldwin: "The paradox of education is precisely this -- that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."