The inequality machine How college divides us

Paul Tough

Book - 2021

"First published as The Years That Matter Most From best-selling author Paul Tough, an indelible and explosive book on the glaring injustices of higher education, including unfair admissions tests, entrenched racial barriers, and crushing student debt. Now updated and expanded for the pandemic era"--

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

378.73/Tough
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 378.73/Tough Checked In
Subjects
Published
Boston : Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Paul Tough (author)
Edition
First Mariner Books edition
Physical Description
xiii, 408 pages ; 21 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780358362050
  • Preface
  • I. Wanting In
  • Decision Day
  • The Mobility Equation
  • II. Getting In
  • Stress Test
  • Income-Typical Behavior
  • Taylorsville
  • III. Fixing the Test
  • Reputation Management
  • Test Prep
  • Blessed
  • IV. Fitting In
  • The Outsider
  • Roots
  • Pedigree
  • Thanksgiving
  • V. Letting In
  • The Admissions-Industrial Complex
  • Going Test-Optional
  • Trinity's Problem
  • VI. Staying In
  • The Graduation Gap
  • Belonging
  • An Intrusive Culture
  • VII. Hanging On
  • Who Needs College?
  • Lower Ed
  • VIII. Getting An A
  • Ancestors
  • What Is X?
  • Workshop Mode
  • IX. After the War
  • The GI Bill
  • Playing for First
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Library Journal Review

Journalist Tough (How Children Succeed) looks at the complex and unpredictable process of admission to and graduation from selective colleges to understand their effect on social mobility in the United States. He finds that Ivy League and other elite institutions have pledged to recruit and support talented low-income students. But these colleges' policies and environments continue to privilege wealthy white students and neglect programs that can mitigate the impact of disadvantage. Tough presents extensive and thoughtful interviews with low-income students working hard to succeed but with insufficient understanding or support. He asserts that College Board claims that SAT exams are no longer biased in favor of the wealthy are unfounded. VERDICT Drawing on broad reading and visits to campuses across the country, Tough's work offers an indictment of American society and political structures and persuasively argues that universities must fulfill the American commitment to equality of opportunity.--Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

1. Decision Day When I walked up out of the subway on that cold spring afternoon, Shannen Torres was nowhere to be seen. We had arranged to meet at 4:15 p.m. in St. Nicholas Park in West Harlem, just down the hill from A. Philip Randolph Campus High School, where she was a senior, a few months away from graduation. But when I got to the park, I couldn't see her anywhere.   My phone buzzed. It was a text from Shannen: "I'm to your left."   I looked up the path and spotted her, sitting huddled over her phone on a bench about fifty yards away. She was dressed in layers against the chill, a beige barn jacket over two dark hoodies. Everything else she wore was black: black sweatpants, big black high-top sneakers, black chunky glasses, and a black backward Nike baseball cap, into which she'd stuffed her long, thick dark hair. I walked over and sat down next to her.   "Hi," she said. "I'm hiding here because I don't want anyone to see me."   I had met Shannen only a couple of times before, so it was hard for me to say for sure if this constituted strange behavior for her. But it definitely seemed a little odd.   Then she explained the situation. It was March 30. At exactly 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, every college in the Ivy League would simultaneously release their acceptance and rejection letters for next year's freshman class. I had dimly understood that the decisions were going out at some point that week, but I hadn't realized they would be arriving at the very moment Shannen and I had planned to meet.   Shannen had applied to two Ivy League colleges: Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. She wanted to get into Princeton, but she really, really wanted to get into the University of Pennsylvania. It had been her "dream school," she told me, since seventh grade. And in less than an hour, either her dream would come true, or it wouldn't.   That fact was overwhelming her. When I'd interviewed her before, she had always seemed pretty cool--a Bronx girl, a streetwise Dominicana--but here on this bench in St. Nicholas Park, she was coming undone right before my eyes. "I'm the nervousest I've ever been," she said. Her hands were trembling. She looked like she was about to cry.   "I think it's just, like, I've been working my entire life for this one thing," she explained. "It feels like everything is depending on this. Which sounds dramatic, I know. But it's true."   Shannen was born in New York City in 1999 to parents who had emigrated from the Dominican Republic. When she was two, with her parents' relationship crumbling, her mother took her and her older brother to New Bedford, Massachusetts. They stayed with some relatives at first, but that arrangement soon crumbled, too, and they moved next into a shelter run by Catholic nuns, and then, after a few months, into an apartment of their own in the projects.   Shannen started elementary school in Massachusetts, and she was a good student from the beginning. School wasn't stressful in those early years, but once her mother moved the family back to New York, to the Bronx, the pressure started to build. In sixth grade Shannen entered Junior High School 22, a struggling school in a hulking building on 167th Street. There were fights in the hallway every day, and she was bullied by new arrivals from the Dominican Republic who made fun of her for not being Dominican enough. Shannen was proud of her roots and her race, but there were elements of other cultures she was coming to appreciate as well: Coldplay, pasta, Harry Potter novels. She retreated into her schoolwork, studying harder, doing more. And when she got to high school, she worked harder still.   In the entrance hall of Randolph High, on a bright yellow bulletin board on the wall, the administration posts, each semester, the honor roll for each grade, all the top scholars from a school of almost fifteen hundred students, listed in order of their grade point average. In the first semester of her freshman year, Shannen's name appeared at the very top of the list, and her name had stayed at the top ever since. Now, as graduation approached, her academic average was 97.7 percent, which would almost certainly make her valedictorian. In three and a half years, she had not missed a single day of high school.   But remaining number one took an enormous effort. Each night, Shannen stayed up until her homework was done perfectly, sometimes till four or five in the morning, ignoring her mother's admonitions to close the books and go to bed. The previous year, her junior year, was the most grueling. Excerpted from The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us by Paul Tough All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.