Stop Bothering Society, Poor Kid: Help Yourself!

People who know me, know that I am a firm believer in systemic inequalities. Our country has done a lot to reduce the legal barriers that inhibited certain races from realizing their full potential (though much still remains). That said, in a country that was built on slavery and did not fully protect the rights of Blacks in law until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you have to imagine that the way the country operates is still favorable to Whites. Even if you full equalized everyone in law and you enforced those laws properly, all American institutions and measures of success are largely based upon White measures of success. Specifically, the White middle and upper class. This article may make you uncomfortable if you are squeamish about talking about race and class (or dislike sarcasm), but my philosophy is that you cannot fix a problem by ignoring it and political correctness is the quickest path to inertia.

An article recently published in Forbes Magazine, entitled “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” recently caught my attention. I responded to the article and then to the author’s response in forceful (and recognizable) terms My intent here is not to rehash my response, but to outline the problem with this author’s overly simplistic assessment and to go one step further by showing the math that debunks his “solution.”

Hey Black Kids, Follow the Binary Road!

Anytime someone who has never been poor or Black and who is not a kid decides to write a treatise on what poor, Black children should do…you should be apprehensive. In the article, a man who is a middle class (and always was middle class) technology expert gives advice to poor black children on how they themselves can and should lift themselves out of poverty. This advice includes:

• Getting good grades
• Using all the free sites on the web like Ted Talks, Cliff’s Notes (a real resource for understanding literature), Google Scholar and Project Gutenberg to do well.
• Finding study partners and using Skype to hone your intellect
• Making sure you get into an elite charter school or get a full ride to a private school
• Sucking up to the guidance counselor so that they help you find jobs, college, and other opportunities
• Learning software programming or computers or another "skill."

All of this advice builds to the conclusion that “Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.” (so, you see, poor, Black people are not smart because they aren't trying to not be poor...that is what you are saying, right sir?)

Wait, There Are Holes in This Guy’s Logic!?

Technology was good for this author: rather than giving him a healthy dose of my backhand, he only had to face my comments. As someone who grew up poor in a big city and who ended up going to Stanford, I actually have a lot of relevant experience to comment on this article (which he denied because poor kids, even after going to Stanford, are not smarter than he). A big part of his solution involves poor kids using computers, and he suggests that in the “unlikely event” that they don’t have one, they can just go to one of their wonderful public libraries.

The problem with libraries

As a child, I DID that. I went to the library, and I almost never touched a computer because poor kids (of all races) are competing with retired, unemployed, homeless people and others. Many computers also have a time restriction (in Chicago it was 30 minutes if someone is waiting, which they always were). Further, some of the things he mentions (google scholar, TED) can probably be accessed from a library computer. That said, most do not have the software or hardware for using Skype or for learning how to code. Further, if you don’t live near a library or it is in a sketchy area, the journey there could be dangerous.

Finally, I did a little calculation using Philadelphia to demonstrate the absurdity of his proposal:

According to the most recent census data, approximately 36,000 children in Philadelphia would be considered “poor, Black kids.” (I calculated this by multiplying Philly’s population by the percentage under age 18, multiplied by the percentage of people who are black, multiplied by the percentage of people who are “in poverty,” which probably understates the amount of people who might benefit from his “solutions.”) According to the Philadelphia Public Library Website, there are 68 public libraries. Not all libraries are open right now, no libraries appear to be open on Sundays, so I am again overstating the library’s ability to absorb people. Libraries are open from 9am to 8pm generally 5 days a week and 9 am until 5 pm on Saturdays (not all, but I’ll be generous). That means each library is open 3,285 hours a year. With 68 libraries, the whole system is open 223,380 hours a year. Let’s assume that each has an average of 20 computers (unlikely, but what the heck, we are white and middle class!). Then the system has just under 4.5 million computer hours to offer to poor black kids. That means, each of our 36,000 poor, black kids gets 125 hours with a computer per year if most skipped school for their allotment and if all other library patrons were banned from the computers. This also assumes perfect mobility and that all kids in poor neighborhoods have equal access to equally capacious libraries, which is a stretch.

Now, with about 1,200 of those library hours occurring during school time (40, five-day weeks lasting from 9am until 3pm), each library can realistically only offer 2,085 hours per year, reducing the system’s capacity to 142,000 non-school hours per year, and with 20 computers assumed per library about 2.8 million computer hours. This amounts to 78 hours per “poor, black kid.” How many skills have you mastered by dedicating 78 hours per year? Now if you assume that a kid needs about 30 minutes of homework help for the 200 days that school is in session, that leaves the kid with -22 hours for learning how to code. How many skills have you learned in -22 hours?

As I noted in my article on teachers correcting for systemic inequality, Chicago just moved to close most of its libraries on Mondays. With many cities facing budget shortfalls, the likelihood that public libraries can serve our nation’s poor as much as is needed to escape poverty is decreasing by the day.

Non-logistical problems with the article

Now, aside from the absurd idea that every kid can get the computer access they need to be able to use technology to solve all of their problems, there are many more problems with the author’s arguments:

1. Think back to high school…how was your guidance counselor? I lucked the heck out and I had a great one who helped me apply to colleges, but with a parent that had not gone to college and being in one of the worst public school systems in the nation, the likelihood that this is a sure path is very low.

2. When you are in a single-parent home or have no parents or your parents are working so much that they cannot help you with homework, how do you get good grades? How do you find out about all of these tech resources? How do you know to read interesting middle class guys on Forbes.com to save you from your poverty?

3. The Harvard Business Review recently wrote several articles that note that most people fail to achieve their goals because they are contingent upon things outside of themselves (for example, if I set the goal "get more hits on my blog," that is outside of myself, because you choose to come here, I can't force you...better goals might be: write more posts, leave the link to my blog in other fora, and use social media to attract people to my blog, all of which I can control). Getting good grades depends a lot a teacher’s subjective assessment, having enough food to be able to concentrate on studying/homework, having utilities to be able to see or not shiver to do your homework (or to go online if you are one of the many poor black kids with computers!), or having access to homework help.

4. I noted that the system is probably rigged in subtle ways to favor its creators: higher income whites. Kids are actually quite receptive to this, and kids have to have a lot of willpower to overcome the stigma that being studious often comes with. Many poor black kids get teased or bullied if they try to be studious, often for “acting white.” An educated child also experiences a lot of distance with their less educated family, which can make it tough to keep fighting an uphill battle.

5. The article ignores entirely the severe disadvantages with which most poor kids enter the public school system. The lack of preschool or structured afterschool programming sets them up to be disadvantaged going in. Further, given the amount of tracking (assigning kids to a regular or more accelerated class which usually determines their future trajectory), many kids may already be routed into the “slow lane" of public education.

6. If kids need to fight to get into good schools, then you are admitting that the public school system is failing them in a disproportionate way, which is antithetical to the point of PUBLIC education, as I noted in my article on charters. As the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman” clearly shows, there is not enough supply of charter /private school seats for poor pupils.

7. It is really hard to fight for 78 hours of public library time after school while also getting a job or internship care of your amazing guidance counselor. Further, what if you are an older sibling caring for your younger siblings?

8. Did you skip childhood? Do you know how hard and counterintuitive it is for a child to be that self-disciplined? Part of the advantage that all higher-income kids have is that they are embedded in a web of discipline that is geared toward doing well in school.

9. This article is incredibly paternalistic (I won’t go so far as to say that the author is racist, because I think he believes his ignorant, ill-informed ideas and thinks that they really are a way to help poor kids.). One, it assumes knowledge of something that the author has never experienced. Two, it assumes that poor, black people should work themselves into the ground to be qualified to serve people like him and his business needs.

10. The article completely removes all culpability from the system or from wealthier people. It is rather unfair that his kids, which he notes “have it a lot easier” and not inherently smarter than their lower-income counterparts, do not have to bootstrap their way to the top. I can’t help but wonder if the author were writing in 1840 if the article would blame slaves for not working hard to cozy up to their masters, save up, and buy their freedom. Life is unfair, but let’s not pretend like this is good for our country. We need to attract and keep good teachers. We need for kids to have proper nutrition. We need for kids to have more equal opportunities to succeed or take advantage of an extra-curricular program/job (within the bounds of child labor laws, please!). We need excellent guidance counselors and capacious libraries. We need safe streets. We need to enable working parents to better participate in their kid’s education and put food on the table.

If I Were an Ignorant, Middle-Class Dude

This is my challenge to Gene Marks, the author of this article: put your money where your mouth is. You, as a high-tech employer are probably suffering from a dearth of high-quality talent, so you benefit from having more people to choose from. Further, as a father, it should concern you when kids are unable to escape poverty and realize their full potential. As a taxpayer, you subsidize all the kids’ education that gets wasted when they drop out, their higher incidence of crime (prison is costly!), their higher likelihood to have a teenage pregnancy, and their lower wages that may push them onto the dole. You have a vested interest as a businessman, father, and taxpayer to help poor kids succeed.

I therefore challenge you to go to North and West Philly and take a handful of poor children under your wing. Find them consistent, regular access to a computer and help orient them to all the tools out there. Give them internships. Help them to learn a skill. Give them strategies and structure to help them navigate their school, extracurriculars, and college effectively. Then report back to everyone on all the challenges your article didn’t account for. Report on the amount of resources that it took for you to succeed.

Mr. Marks, my issue with your article was not that the solutions themselves are bad. I used several of them to succeed: I worked my ass off to get good grades and get into magnet schools, I befriended my high school counselor, I went to the library most days of the week, and I taught myself one (and then several) foreign languages. My concern is that it is impractical to expect a kid without any guidance to even think to do all these things, especially when they are logistically improbable. So help some kids to think of these solutions and to carry them out. I want more kids to succeed like me, but I know that my success and theirs is tied to the amount of people who are willing to offer extra guidance and to the ability of the school system and libraries to support and reinforce these kids’ successes.

Act on it!

• Write Mr. Marks or comment on the Forbes article and encourage him to accept my challenge. Write other businessmen and encourage them to offer guidance and cultivate a generation of leaders from the lower-rungs of the socioeconomic ladder of society.
• Take a kid under your wing and offer them access to some of the great tools that Mr. Marks suggests. Consider Big Brothers and Sisters of America or the scores of other organizations working to help kids overcome poverty.
• Fight to keep your local library system open more, give it more resources, and help kids to use them for success.

Speak out!

What other problems do you see with the solutions that Mr. Marks offers? Which of his solutions do you find salient or salvageable?

What do you think it takes for a poor person or someone who suffers from institutional inequality to make it if the system is unable to help them?

-----

For those who are curious, here is what I wrote to the author:

“Sir, as a white kid who grew up on welfare in a single-parent home and went on to graduate from Stanford, you might think that I would support you. Instead, I am so incredibly disappointed in your ignorant “recipe” for success. I got into a magnet school that my mom found out about by sheer accident. I went to the library and read a lot because it was the only place with adequate heat and electricity. The problem? I got evicted more times than I can count. Our utilities got shut off so often. I did not, contrary to your “teacher friends’” assessment, have a computer at home. Had I known about any of these tools (likelihood is that I would not have and that my mother would have been even less likely to as a waitress working 15 hours a day 6 days a week), I still wouldn’t have been able to use them. What library system could accommodate all the poor kids (of any race) to help them to realize this goal? Where would I find the time to use these resources when I started to work at age 15? Where would I get my stamina to study “coding” when we didn’t have enough food to eat dinner that day? It is articles like these that perpetuate the systemic ignorance of the role class and race play on success and prevent us from real solutions. You clearly do not understand what it is like to be poor, and your blindness is a danger because this article will only reach those who are well enough to-do to have an impact on policies that directly affect your mythical “poor black kid.” And those policy makers will make terrible choices that entrench systemic racism and class division even further in our country. Shame on you.”

Here is his response:

“Thanks for your comment. I still stick to what I wrote, and believe that the opportunity is there for everyone if they study hard and get good grades, use technology to help them get good grades, apply to the best schools they can, get help from their guidance counselor, and make sure to learn a good skill.”

You be the judge. Don’t accept inequality of opportunity. Don’t blame the victims. When one person succeeds, we all benefit in concrete ways. Our country’s future depends on everyone being proactive, not washing their hands of blame.

Easing the College Debt Bubble Before It Pops

In what was the first of several posts in my "Is College Worth It?" Series, I questioned whether college should be the default destination for all high school graduates. One of the big reasons for asking the question, I noted, is the amount of debt students are accruing--and increasingly unable to pay. Everyone remembers how the economy almost collapses when bubbles have burst in the past, right? Remember how all that bad debt to homeowners to buy houses way out of their price range resulted in the collapse of the housing market? Well, the next bubble may have been identified, and it is student debt.


The Problem

Student debt is often called "good debt." It is an investment in yourself, the story goes, because you will make more and pay back that money no sweat with the swank job you land out of college. College also cost a lot less. Now, college prices are increasing astronomically. The College Board reports (pdf) that over the past decade the tuition for public four year colleges has increased by 54 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. For private universities, tuition increased by 33 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. That's a huge increase, especially when we already have seen that nearly a third of college graduates are not improving in any higher-level thinking skills. With high unemployment and increased credentialing, many people are not getting those good jobs they were promised. Without good jobs and with greater amounts of debt, more and more people are unable to pay. Even those who drop out are often saddled with debt (69% of college drop outs have debt according to the Economist).

When people cannot pay, suddenly good debt becomes bad debt, and increasing amounts of bad debts create bubbles. As the Huffington Post reported, this year the amount of student loan debt eclipsed the amount of credit card debt. Yikes, maybe dropping you Visa on some Gucci is the new "good debt." Either way, over 10 million American students hold debt amounting to at least $750 billion dollars with Sallie Mae alone (wasn't that the amount of one of those bailouts?) and perhaps as much as $1 trillion if you include private loans. The average student graduating in 2010 owed about $25,000. Without jobs, the amount of students that could not pay and defaulted on their loans increased from seven to nine percent last year.


Just How Enslaved Will You Be?

Let's do some brief calculations using the FinAid! loan debt calculator:

• If you have the average amount of debt ($25,000) after college and you get a "reasonable" interest rate of 6.8%, you will need to pay $290 a month for ten years and need roughly $35,000 in annual income. At the end of the day, you will have paid almost 40% more for your college education ($35,000) than you were told college would cost.


• If you go to a private university, and borrow $25000 per year at the same interest rate, you will be paying $1,150 per month for ten years and will need to earn about $92,000 per year after graduating. At the end of it all, your degree will have cost you $38,000 extra in interest.

With so many students affected and saddled into debt for so long (student loan debt is one of the few kinds of debts that you can never get rid of, interestingly enough), something needs to change. Parents and students need to stop taking it for granted that college will always be worth it and that they will be able to pay off whatever debt they take on. Schools and banks need to do a better job of both reigning in tuition and fees and making sure that the consequences of taking on debt are clear to borrowers. The federal government needs a better managed system. I am a bureaucrat, and I work with many talented colleagues. They are not so talented at managing loans, as evidenced by my having to call the Department of Education FOUR times to try to figure out how to consolidate my loan. The fourth call was me telling some clueless Department of Education sap how to go about doing their job, and that is scary.


What can be done?

One of the big failures I see with the Occupy Movements is that they have not moved beyond identifying the above problem and pushing for concrete policy changes. So, I would like to propose some things that will help ease this bubble at the grassroots level, in the banks, and in the government.
At the grassroots

1. Students need to understand the burden college will represent for at least ten years out of school. HS counselors should be trained and required to dispassionately walk through how much going to a school will cost, how long it will take to repay that amount, how much income one will have to earn to repay, etc.


2. Parents and students might read more of the works of James Altucher and
   decide whether or not there is a more cost effective way to learn than college
   that will not saddle them with so much debt (particularly in the case of
   students who are not terribly inspired to go to college).


3. Start saving money early for your child (or self) and consider delaying college until you have a sizeable savings. If you save just $500 a year from your child's birth,
   the calculations I did above change dramatically. Someone with the average
   amount of debt now only owes $16,000 and pays only $190 a month. Someone
   with 100,000 in debt will pay a large, but more manageable $1047
   monthly.


4. Encourage your child to pay some money while in school to reduce the
   amount of principle.
   

In the banks

1. Don't allow banks to capitalize interest until 6 to 12 months after graduation (when interest capitalizes, it becomes part of the principal, meaning you are going to pay interest on your interest!).


2. Cap interest rates at a certain percent (I would say 5%), and let them float if the national borrowing rate is below that amount (but not above). I pay a much higher rate (7.3%) to borrow than banks pay to borrow money right now. That is ridiculous given that education is a public good.


3. Small banks are more responsible lenders and loans should be federally backed and administered through them. They are likely to be more honest and communicative and will want to help the student to pay back the debt. Further, it distributes the debt so that it doesn't hit any one single lender and cause a huge collapse.


4. Offer rate incentives for responsible payers, or consider offering perks to those who save and take out a loan or to those who take out a loan and continue banking with your institution.

In the Government:

1. The federal government should guarantee, but not service loans. They have proven time and again that most of them are simply not capable. It's not their fault either: you are asking bureaucrats to be bankers. You might as well have them managing oil rigs or building bridges. Regulating to ensure equal access to credit for college aspirants is more appropriate than providing the loan.


2. Make student loan debt not-for-profit: if the federal government makes far more than the ticket price of the degree plus inflation, there is an issue. The government already reaps the benefits of lower likelihood to commit a crime and a higher likelihood to have a job. Georgetown's Center for Workforce Development found that kids with graduate degrees have only a 3% unemployment rate.


3. Create a program that allows parents and children to deduct savings for college from their pre-tax income. If the tax payer is footing the bill either way, it might as well be for actual skills development instead of paying interest.


4. Build stronger alternative schooling that feeds directly into high school (especially vocational programs) so that kids have a viable option if they choose not to go to college.
   Increase awareness of grant programs early in high school to avoid saddling people with debt. EdWeek blogger Caralie Adams wrote a piece on how many parents do not know about federal grant programs, based on a report from the College Board that showed that poorer, less educated, and Latino parents were all far less likely to know about these opportunities. Fewer than half of parents knew the cost of a college education in-state.


5. Promote policies that reduce or eliminate debt with much more certainty for key sectors. For example, teaching would be impossible for me right now given teachers' salaries and my own debt. But, if I was allowed to pay at an income-based rate and had my interest capped, I could enter many fields that would allow me to invest more in society.


6. Deny funding to and publicly censure colleges that raise their rates unjustifiably. If a college is not doing better at producing employment, post-grad degrees, or enhancing students' skills, they should not be allowed to increase tuition. This is particularly true for schools that do not incurr higher expenses directly related to student learning or in schools that increase class sizes (without staff increases), widely slice majors, or defund research or volunteer opportunities for their students.