The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges are Failing Disadvantaged Students

Spring break is a difficult time for disadvantaged students, given Renowned’s policy of closing all cafeterias during the break. A student named Joshua experienced this as an insult: How is it okay for a school with a multibillion-dollar endowment to save money by leaving disadvantaged students nowhere to eat during break? The sense of being poor on a wealthy campus is common to both the Privileged Poor and the Doubly Disadvantaged. They feel it most in three areas that are generally ignored by affluent undergraduates: the Community Detail program, Scholarship Plus, and cafeteria closures. Because of Jack’s advocacy, Renowned has changed two of these practices.

At the end of summer at Renowned, groups of teenagers walked around carrying cylindrical backpacks and white baskets. These students were incoming freshmen in the Community Detail program on their way to clean dorm rooms recently vacated by the hundreds of students who attended summer programs at Renowned. Students in the program described foul conditions, but many lower-income students felt they had no choice but to participate. Unlike the other activities available to incoming freshmen, Community Detail paid participants. Once the number of scholarship students increased, Renowned rolled Community Detail into preorientation because the school no longer had enough workers to clean dormitories before school started.