I immigrated from Mexicali, Mexico, when I was 10 years old, the child of farm laborers. I was still learning English when my high school teachers advised me to forgo any college dreams.
But there in the Imperial Valley of southeast California, I forged ahead as a full-time night student, picking up what wages I could during the day. The goal of breaking cycles of poverty possessed me. I managed to earn an associate’s degree from Imperial Valley College. After transferring to San Diego State University’s Imperial Valley Campus, I earned my bachelor’s in psychology among scattered trailers and temporary classrooms.
My single-minded focus was not on self-discovery but intergenerational mobility. Like an arduous hike from a valley up to a mountain summit with a beautiful vista, that first-generation diploma changed the trajectory of my family. I went on earn a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and take on administrative roles that opened up higher education to more students like me.
The notion that college is not worth it is deeply inequitable. Georgetown researchers predict that within a decade, nearly three-quarters of jobs will require some education or training after high school.
“Jobs for people without college degrees that pay over $130,000 a year make up 1 percent of the American economy,” Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, recently told CNBC.
Admittedly, college is expensive. But it remains the best way to break cycles of poverty, and I am disturbed by the flippant, harmful cynicism of prominent college critics like Elon Musk (college is “basically for fun” and “not for learning”) and Bill Maher, who called college “a giant scam.”
I am here to provide the college counternarrative. The truth is there are educational attainment inequalities in our country. Those who say that education isn’t for everyone tend to be white, rich and educated — and they surround themselves with other white, rich, educated people. A college degree helps members of underrepresented groups get their break.
If one looks at the current arguments that college is not worth it from a sociocultural perspective, one has to ask who is promoting that message? Interestingly, those who amplify that message have college degrees, and so do their family members. As someone who was academically tracked to not go to college and instead encouraged to go to a technical school, I find the messaging abhorrent. Black, Latino and poor white students in my high school were consistently placed in remedial courses and vocational courses such as small engine repair, auto repair shop and wood shop. Meanwhile, white students from the affluent part of our little town enrolled in college prep courses.
I clearly recall when I finally met my high school advisor and I told her that I wanted to go to college. She looked at me with a blank stare, as if to say, “pobrecito,” and told me bluntly that college was not a viable choice for me.
White kids received the opposite message; they were told that college was the only option for them. College was a right for them but a privilege for the rest of us. This messaging keeps marginalized students living in poverty and reinforces the vicious cycle of poverty. On the other hand, white students going on to college ensures that they can replace their own in those positions of power and authority while pulling the ladder up behind them.
I was the only one in my group of friends at my high school who refused to listen to the guidance counselor who told me that college was “not for me.” From a recent New York Timespodcast episode to a much-cited Gallup poll showing a drop in Americans’ confidence in higher education, too many students from marginalized communities are hearing the continual drumbeat of the same message I heard decades ago. Now, these same marginalized students and their families are hearing from the media that college is “not for you.” The message that I heard in a one-to-one meeting with my guidance counselor is now being amplified by national news outlets endlessly sharing stories of how the general public now perceives college as not worth it.
Why are we urging marginalized students and their families not to waste their time and money, that college is not worth it, that they don’t want all that debt, that they will do fine without a college education, and to pursue training at a trade school instead? I and many others know from lived experience that earning a college degree is a right for marginalized students and can break the cycle of poverty. We know that a college degree leads to better health outcomes, a more engaged and responsible citizenry, that we collectively generate more tax revenue, that we become life-long learners, that our families and our communities are transformed, and that we have more control over our careers.
These “not for you” messages cause harm to the next generation of diverse college-going students. I, for one, will not remain silent as I view silence as complicity to this injustice. It is up to all of us to rise up and challenge that harmful narrative.
Jose Luis Alvarado, Ph.D., has been the dean of the Fordham Graduate School of Education since 2021.