Upstairs-Downstairs at College
Dec. 11th, 2007 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msmemory_archiveHarvard's noticing, maybe Wellesley won't be far behind. This is exactly the disparity that I dream of addressing if I ever win the Lotto and can set up a specific fund at my alma mater, with the addition of fee-based lessons such as riding or music.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/education/11harvard.html
Many Harvard officials, Dr. Faust said, feared that cost was driving the choices students made about graduate school and careers and that it had created what amounted to a two-class system among Harvard undergraduates. Mr. Fitzsimmons referred to it as “the upstairs downstairs syndrome.”
The officials said, for example, that often only the wealthy students can afford to pursue highly valuable but unpaid research opportunities with professors, take unpaid summer internships, study abroad or even spend time with their friends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/education/11harvard.html
Many Harvard officials, Dr. Faust said, feared that cost was driving the choices students made about graduate school and careers and that it had created what amounted to a two-class system among Harvard undergraduates. Mr. Fitzsimmons referred to it as “the upstairs downstairs syndrome.”
The officials said, for example, that often only the wealthy students can afford to pursue highly valuable but unpaid research opportunities with professors, take unpaid summer internships, study abroad or even spend time with their friends.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 04:20 pm (UTC)I am so entirely familiar with this phenomenon. Of course, I'd probably still be in the theatre field now if I'd been able to really pursue that sort of thing, or living in Ireland. Only one of those two is still appealing.
Travel abroad and unpaid internships? Not so much. 3 jobs senior year? I'm pretty good at using Windows and washing dishes.
This was a problem for me even in graduate school, where I couldn't look at anything that didn't pay.
Granted, had I been in another field (like computers), I'm not sure it would have been as much of a problem to have to choose work over unpaid opportunities, and the opportunities might not have been unpaid to begin with.