More on the problem

I recommend reading the NY Times article "The college Dropout Boom" (If you don't have an account, you can register; it is free and then you can read other NYT shit as well). This article first caught my attention from the location; Chilhowie isn't all that far from Sparta, and then I was further interested by the fact that my cousin just graduated from Radford (by the way, it was once an all-female school, and is still a large % female), the school Andy drops out of. However, the best portions of this article are not the stories of Andy's struggles in southwest Va, because let's be honest, Andy has it pretty good for that corner of the state. The best parts are nuggets like this one,

"In fact, though, colleges have come to reinforce many of the advantages of birth. On campuses that enroll poorer students, graduation rates are often low. And at institutions where nearly everyone graduates - small colleges like Colgate, major state institutions like the University of Colorado and elite private universities like Stanford - more students today come from the top of the nation's income ladder than they did two decades ago. Only 41 percent of low-income students entering a four-year college managed to graduate within five years, the Department of Education found in a study last year, but 66 percent of high-income students did. That gap had grown over recent years."

This is a sad fact that most don't realize, and its a larger problem than you think. It's the same old system of priviledge, but instead of being obviously biased towards the old money and status, it is now a direct result of these; kids in places like southwest virginia do not come to the table with the same tools as those growing up in richer areas. It isn't that the schools are necessarily biased against them, but in the end, higher education needs to realize that diversity is more than race, sex, and religion. Another wonderful part of the article is the focus on UVa., and if you are not familiar with the stigma (or aura, depending on your outlook) attached to that university, ask a friend (who isn't a Doctor or Lawyer) from Virginia. One of the best public schools in the country, in U.S. News' opinion; but how do they do it? By pawning off the lower class students to other state schools like ODU and Radford. As the article points out,

"Admitting large numbers of low-income students could bring clear complications. Too many in a freshman class would probably lower the college's average SAT score, thereby damaging its ranking by U.S. News & World Report, a leading arbiter of academic prestige. Some colleges, like Emory University in Atlanta, have climbed fast in the rankings over precisely the same period in which their percentage of low-income students has tumbled. The math is simple: when a college goes looking for applicants with high SAT scores, it is far more likely to find them among well-off teenagers."

If you are looking for a parallel in NC, think Appalachian, Western, etc. Not that UNC is quite as bad, but perhaps looking north of the border can give us a valuable lesson about what a Public University shouldn't be. It's also encouraging to see a publication like the New York Times focusing on this area, which is one of the poorer regions in the country; despite the vacation homes and ski resorts, there are many who struggle to make it up there. Andy had a hard time leaving, and he is a microcosm of the larger problem. Sometimes, it's just too hard to make it out.