*I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change; I’m changing the things I cannot accept.* Professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology, Temple U.

Apr 30, 2016

Don’t assume your student is sleeping off a night of partying: Many are exhausted from working night shifts, or sleep-deprived from couch-surfing because they can’t afford their own place to live. Photo: iStock

#RealCollege

by Sara Goldrick-Rab

On Thursday and Friday my team at the Wisconsin HOPE Lab hosted more than 150 people from around the country in a convening about food and housing insecurity in higher education. We called it #RealCollege and we met at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, one of the nation’s community colleges where the situation is oh-so-real.

We sat in the middle of an intensely segregated and impoverished city determined to do better. We sat together, and we talked. We shared stories. We exchanged strategies. But we did so much, much more. We began to ACT.

The result, I promise, will be nothing less than a sea-change in higher education.

If we want to talk about the importance of students completing degrees then we must DO SOMETHING to ensure that they can eat every day and sleep safely every night.

These basic requirements are just that — non-optional. It is utterly irresponsible to prepare students for college without preparing ourselves to ensure they can survive it.

Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from a student I’ve never met. I don’t know where she is, who she is, but she made #RealCollege come alive. I know from research we and others have done that an estimated 20% of community college students are hungry, and an estimated 13% are homeless. I know that financial aid falls incredible short, that the FAFSA is a rationing mechanism not a tool designed to help, and that students everywhere are paying the price. But her letter — pasted below — serves as a reminder of how nameless and faceless these challenges currently are.

We will stop this madness. Real people are suffering. We see you. We see you and we will help you. Because you are talented and ambitious and do not deserve to be penalized for wanting an education. I swear.

A message in a bottle

Dear Dr. Goldrick-Rab,

I hope this message gets to you. I was moved and inspired by #realcollege. You’ve probably heard too much from struggling students but I had to send a message in a bottle:

When I asked a faculty member why our college has such a low completion rate even though we have many academic supports available for struggling students she shrugged. Part of growing up is being willing and able to negotiate institutions and interact with people who have more power than you. I asked another older student like myself why we had so many students who dropped out or flunked out of college. He said that they were just getting financial aid and then they stopped coming to class. I asked a student tutor at the Student Success Center why no one came to her for tutoring even when I knew there were students dropping out of classes or struggling with course material. She said she guessed they were lazy and didn’t care. Time after time, those in a position to offer support or advice seemed to be startlingly tone-deaf to the experiences of struggling students.

J. often falls asleep in Research Methods class, misses assignments, and sometimes skips class. When I ran into him outside of class I asked him how he was doing. He said he guessed his D average in the class was okay — he was just really tired from working overnight shifts at a local packaging plant. He was more worried about other military veterans like him who were having an even harder time.

T. is now working at Walmart. He dropped out of college after he couldn’t pass his calculus A classes. He wound up owing several thousand dollars to the university and can’t return until he pays it back. He is a foster care alumni who aged out without a driver’s license or a safe stable place to stay. He couch surfs and lives on ramen when money gets tight between paychecks.

A. raised her hand in class when an instructor told her to turn in an assignment online. “I don’t have internet access.” The instructor told her to do it at the library. What he doesn’t know is that A. also works an overnight shift at a group home for profoundly disabled adults and if she has to go to the university or public library she must either cut sleep or class. That is assuming she can afford the gas to get there.

R. asked me in the elevator after a class if she could borrow my notes for a low level course. She was struggling to write her term paper. I obliged and handed over the notes. I was pleased to meet another “non-traditional” student, so I asked her a bit about her life. She is a nursing assistant and wants to get into a nursing program so that she can improve her salary. Unfortunately, R. struggles with basic writing because it had been a long time since she was in school. R. had to drop out of the class when she was diagnosed with cancer.

M. has been going to various community colleges on and off for years trying to get a degree. I met her during my own time at a local two-year school and was excited to see her when we both transitioned to a four-year university. Still, M. is worried about one little class: Public Speaking. M. is an immigrant from Mexico. With help, she has improved her writing enough to get by, but the process is laborious and painstaking. With days to prepare she can manage a 500 word essay, but the thought of speaking in front of other students and possibly being ridiculed when she gropes for the right English phrase fills her with anxiety.

P. is a brilliant scholar and makes good grades with minimal effort. However, sometimes he misses classes and important assignment deadlines. This is because P. spends multiple hours a day working on his mother’s goat farm a short drive from our little college town. I sometimes find him asleep in the student lounge or in the little Women’s Studies library where I work. His back aches from manual labor and his eyes are red with fatigue.

When everyone seems to be buzzing with excitement about their summer vacation I nod, smile, and pretend that I am excited too. They don’t know that I am worried about how to feed myself and my nine-year old daughter when there will be no school lunches or breakfasts. They don’t know that work-study, like most things in the academe, only pays for my position during the academic year. I sweat through my finals thinking about unpaid utility bills and all the jobs I’ve unsuccessfully applied for.

So this is the face of the “entitled and lazy” generation of undergraduates. We disappear from our classrooms. No one misses us. When a concerned faculty member or classmate confronts us about inadequate assignments or poor attendance we mutter excuses and try to slip away unnoticed. We sleep in our cars. We go to bed hungry. We can’t find childcare or someone to sit with our sick family members. We work long hours and erratic schedules. We are as invisible and ubiquitous as air.

Sara Goldrick-Rab is a long-time activist for equity and justice, especially in higher education. She is a professor of higher education policy and sociology and a member of AFT’s Temple Association of University Professionals. Read about the fund she established to help struggling students. At left, she is shown with Michael Rosen, president of Local 212 at Milwaukee Area Technical College, where he helps administer the fund. For more content on higher education and labor go to Voices on Campus.