The Cost of Being Me
I had a growing pit in my stomach. I’d signed up to lead a Global Study Trip (GST) to Japan during my second MBA year. While Stanford had yet to declare university-wide travel restrictions, I’d been mentally preparing to craft a virtual global experience. This challenge fell right in my wheelhouse. Prior to attending Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), I built my career in education and leadership development. I knew a virtual GST could be successful. But that didn’t change the pit in my stomach.
I chose to leave my GST team. I told them I’d gain similar skills from other extracurriculars. The weight of planning this GST alongside the pandemic and endemic racism was more than I could handle. All true, but not the whole story.
Here’s the answer I’m still scared to share: I left because I could not figure out how my time would be compensated for doing the same labor I was once paid to do professionally.
When I signed on to lead the GST, that compensation was clear: I’d provide educational programming and get an unrivaled experience across the globe, an experience I otherwise couldn’t afford. Perhaps my original intention was transactional, but I’ve found many of my decisions come down to whether my time will be compensated. That’s because I’m trying to make up for the costs.
A Stanford MBA is a huge investment, and on top of that, there are countless costs beyond the price tag that I never anticipated based on the GSB’s reputation and resources. These hidden costs disproportionately impact underrepresented students, particularly Black students like me, and ask us to make a choice: belong at the GSB or pursue the opportunities that brought us here.
Let’s start with the decision every student faces — funding their education. I’m grateful to have received a need-based fellowship from the GSB’s Financial Aid office. But my “fair package” suggests I take out $103,230 in loans. Before this, I had spent eight years in the nonprofit workforce, where my annual salary was under two-thirds of my required loan obligation, at best. At worst, I was on food stamps.
In addition to my loans, Financial Aid recommended removing approximately 60 percent of my retirement savings. But every dollar I’d saved for retirement came from my paycheck; I’d never received a company match or contribution. I feel penalized for years of thoughtful retirement saving; I don’t want to actually get penalized for withdrawing it.
I won’t belabor the cost of an MBA — it’s an opportunity cost that each student works through in their own way. But there are other costs students face outside the classroom that can impact their time and networks at the GSB. There are the expensive galas and unofficial trips around the world. Even the GSB residences, where proximity to classmates means a higher price than other campus housing.
Then there’s the cost of being me — a mixed-race, Jewish woman and a nontraditional student — at the GSB.
Even with financial aid, I did not qualify for club dues assistance, which meant I could not afford to join my desired career clubs. Instead, I prioritized paying to belong over advancing my career. To simply join my peers in the Black, Jewish, and Women-in-Management communities cost me $70. I spent money to remain on identity-group listservs, to stay informed of gatherings hosted by my communities. I’m grateful the Jewish Business Student Association does not charge dues; it meant I didn’t have to choose between identities that make me, me.
That said, the Black Business Student Association (BBSA) does charge dues in order to hold events exclusively for the Black community. We are the only group consistently providing this respite, and we still have to charge our members to create a space where we belong.
The cost of belonging extends beyond identity clubs. Prior BBSA members instilled in us the importance of serving as leaders across the GSB, and the inequity I’ve observed since starting my MBA has propelled me to work for change. Today, I co-chair the GSB’s Academic Committee within student government. I advocated for and managed this Black Voices issue of nondisclosure. My father calls this kind of volunteering the Brown Tax: “the compelling need and expectation to pull the next generation along, even (especially) when we’re uncompensated and torn in different directions.”
I’ve long given back to my communities, but at the GSB, I’m not working for free. I’m paying an institution and supporting its work. I show up every day, in debt to the GSB, leaning on my expertise in equity and education to effectively partner with its administration. It’s work that one side of the table is getting paid to do and the other side is paying to do. For me, these projects aren’t labors of love; they’re labors of survival.
This is not just my story. Only 5.5 percent of the GSB’s 2021 class identify as Black, yet our student government’s executive team is exclusively women and people of color, and 50 percent Black. The Black community is underrepresented at the school but overrepresented in service to the GSB. This is why I’m too exhausted to run a GST. Who knows what opportunities my peers have sacrificed to do their share.
Recently, the BBSA leadership team worked over 50 hours to create a strategy and presentation to fight for their lives. Twenty percent of the GSB’s 2021 class came from consulting: how much would you get paid per hour to do the same?
Over 40 members from the GSB’s Black community showed up to that hour-long meeting with the deans to share our experiences, pain, requests, and demands. Even if each person in that room were paid California’s minimum wage — $13/hour — for their time and input, that meeting costs over $500.
At these meetings, the administration told us, “we really need your help” — a signal Black leadership is valuable. Therefore, it’s time to reimagine compensation at the GSB.
If relying on the Black community helps address racism at the GSB, the administration should compensate people accordingly. Roles supporting racial equity should be paid part-time positions instead of volunteer councils and task forces. Alternatively, the GSB could grant scholarships for community involvement. While I don’t love having to prove my worth to make the GSB more equitable, I’d gladly submit a scholarship application if it reduced my debt or incentivized my labor.
The least expensive solution would be not to rely on Black individuals to do the labor of our GSB community. To quote my father again on the Brown Tax, “Sitting on a variety of institutional committees that require representation by underrepresented minorities interferes with our own dreams.” As Black leaders, let’s be mindful of how often we are volunteering our limited time at the GSB, especially when offering our expertise on racial equity and justice.
Allies: put your marketable skills to work on behalf of Black lives. Create presentations for the administration. Share your ideas for racial equity or amplify ideas you’ve learned. Most of this equity work is tedious, not flashy — we rarely receive gold stars. But this will enable Black students to pursue more of GSB’s resources while volunteering our time less. In putting together this Black Voices issue of nondisclosure, I received overwhelming verbal support, but when I asked for help, very few allies made themselves available. Thank you to the allies who did — you know who you are.
Ultimately, the most direct way to compensate Black talent is to offer financial aid or scholarships on par with other elite institutions. I recognize this will be a radical shift in the GSB’s financial aid structure, but as the BBSA points out in their presentation, HBS and Wharton have integrated their diversity recruitment and financial aid strategies. Many of us turned down significant funding from other institutions to take advantage of resources available at the GSB; it’s easy to imagine others turned down the GSB due to lack of resources. If the administration does “need our help,” then the GSB needs to yield more Black students to continue making this place thrive.
At the GSB, I’ve trained myself to choose extracurricular opportunities that “pay” me — in money or coaching — to justify my time, debt, and opportunity cost. I chose to be a paid TA instead of running for club leadership. I’ve joined GSB-funded communications programming instead of self-funded social or career networks. I often wonder if I’d make the same decisions if I weren’t financially tied to the GSB in this way. Maybe I’d have joined the Education Club, Tech Club, or Wine Club. Maybe I would be taking advantage of all the resources I came here for. And maybe I’d still be running that GST.
