The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students

The book itself had great potential to be really good, but the conclusion is completely missing. In addition to it jumping from page 180 to page 213, it then jumps from page 244 back to page 213. Very odd. Would like to know what the conclusion said.

Anthony Jack had a great idea when he developed the theory that not all poor students at elite universities had a similar experience. He notes that among poor students there are some that are relatively "privileged" as compared to their peers. In high school, the privileged poor had the opportunity to attend elite high schools. This experience gives those students an advantage when they later attend elite universities. I do not think that is too surprising. But in the world of sociology, I guess it is important to be the first to note this phenomenon.Anthony Jack goes on to note how elite universities do a poor job of supporting both the privileged and non-privileged poor students. I think this is the best aspect of his book and I hope his work improves the lives of future low income students in elite universities.I am a first generation Mexican American who attended an elite university 35 years ago when this lack of support was even more egregious. However, those of us who survived the experience did not have the language available that the current generation has. I remember cleaning out dorm rooms and never feeling that I was somehow victimized by the experience. I can only wonder how I would have felt if we had the current racial framework and language. It will be interesting to see how Anthony Jack's work will change the mentality of future low income students at elite universities.

This book has been on my list for quite some time, but I was never quite compelled to read it. Had it not been one for our book club, I probably would have kept it on my to-read list. However, I’ll now rank it as one of my top-reads! As the Executive Director of a college readiness program, this is an eye-opening and thought-provoking read that challenges me to think about where we are sending our college students and how we can equip and prepare them. This book gave me words and pages that speak to challenges I’ve always noticed but never quite fully figured out ways to address. I am now thinking about ways we can adjust a few of our processes to do more for our students, but also ways to use these new processes to challenge a system that is not set up to be equitable to those it professes to serve. Much like elite colleges, high school magnet schools do the same thing to students. It seems that he has helped move this needle since 2015. Now that I’ve read this book, it’s my job to help him move that in other sectors and areas of the country as well.

Love this book!

His book is quite phenomenal as it highlights how colleges are failing at serving students from poor families, but it's not as simple as one may think. He proposes a new framework of looking at poor students: those who had more privilege in the sense they want to a prep school and those who went to the local segregated high school. He follows the experiences of these two groups for over 2 years interviewing them and highlighting the divergent experiences they live out on a college campus.I had the pleasure of hearing him talk at my college. He filled a 150 person auditorium to the brim. This was part of his national tour speaking and sharing at 30+ colleges. He is definitively the real deal. You can search his name and the book title to find videos of his talks online too so you can learn more. I recommend the book if you want to read about the vivid and nitty-gritty stuff instead of just the highlights.

How can I begin to describe how much this book means? And not just because the contents made me feel validated in my college experience, but because this book gives me hope for the future of higher education. As institutions work towards opening the doors to those with less access, books like this are increasingly important. As administrators and faculty (many of whom do not come from the backgrounds that their students do) seek to understand how to better support their students, richly written books like this shed light on the Diversity of the needs of their students.It was hard to read, to see that my own experiences weren’t an aberration. I haven’t felt that since I first read Anzaldúa.Please read this. If you’re not sure about your role in academia, read this. If you want genuinely funny and relatable prose, please read this. If you want to know more about how the other other-half lives, read this.

In a political context where everyone is talking about "privilege," Jack's book will help you to understand that it's never as simple as two groups, the "privileged" and the "not privileged." There's a lot more nuance, which many other sociological studies have glossed over.I can recommend this book as appropriate for both academic and non-academic audiences. I read it in a graduate seminar but would feel comfortable recommending it to the educators in my family. The methodological appendix is extremely good, showing that scientific work and reflexive work are not total opposites.I am surprised to see other reviews describe the book as an ethnography, because I felt the project was very interview-driven (103 interviews with students and then supplementary interviews with other members of the university) and only supplemented by field data. I wouldn't want anyone to expect an ethnography.