Students should “occupy” colleges that ignore their needs, writes Sara Goldrick-Rab on Education Optimists. Students whose parents aren’t college-educated are “stunned by the high and rising costs of attendance, and the lack of grant aid available to them,” she writes.
These are the students willing to work long hours to make ends meet, but continually surprised that the faculty and administrators don’t respond in turn to accommodate their needs with flexible scheduling, remote advising, and timetables for timely degree completion that don’t require full-time enrollment. These are the students who attend the vast majority of our public colleges and universities, and our community colleges, and these are the students at the heart of Occupy Colleges.
Colleges and universities have become less hospitable to “non-traditional” students, who make up at least half of undergraduates, Goldrick-Rab writes.
The growth of the student services industry has segregated the job of meeting students’ needs to administrators, letting faculty off the hook. The shift to part-time, contingent labor has lessened the ability of professors to spend the kind of time required to really get to know and address their students’ needs–thus creating a stronger rationale for relying on administrators.
As state support declines, public colleges and universities are moving to the high tuition/high aid model, she writes. But this discourages potential students who take sticker prices as real. And aid rarely rises to match tuition.
Many non-traditional students enroll in community colleges. They rarely face high sticker prices or heavy debt. But they also don’t experience “flexible scheduling, remote advising and timetables for timely degree completion that don’t require full-time enrollment.” I doubt if many are participating in an “Occupy College” protest. They don’t have the time.
