Class Autobiography

Bryan Caplan writes:

My Future Class History, by Bryan Caplan: Class Action challenges visitors to write a Class Autobiography: "Write your 'Class Autobiography.' A powerful way to reflect on class is to take an hour and write the story of your upbringing in relation to money and class." I had a lot of fun writing my Intellectual Autobiography, so I'm intrigued enough to give Class Autobiography a try. I'll probably post it in a few days. Any other bloggers care to join me?

Bryan's class essay is here. I decided to take up the challenge. I'm kind of nervous about this, it's self-centered, whiny, all sorts of stuff, I'm not sure how it reads, so I won't be the least bit upset if you decide to skip this post. But what the heck, here it is:

My mom's family is Mormon, something that ended with my grandmother, and they helped to settle the area where I grew up. My mom was born in the town I grew up in, a town of 3,500 people in California in a place called Colusa. It is named after the Colus Indians. Her dad sold farm equipment for the Caterpillar dealer in town and they were lower middle class, though she describes it as being very poor - getting a pair of socks for Christmas, that sort of thing.

My dad grew up on a small farm just outside of Yuba City, California near a one store town called Tudor. His family was lower middle class at best, though poor might describe them better. During World War II he also lived in San Francisco (briefly) while my grandfather worked in the shipyards.

Most of my family on my mom's side is involved in farming in one way or another, and as I just noted my dad grew up on a farm. Because of that background, education wasn't important. Until my generation, there is only one relative I know about who graduated from a four year school, and that was probably because he played football there.

My parents did attend college briefly, a community college, and that is where they met. I think my dad was there just to play football, and I'm not sure what my mom's goals were, but I do know they both dropped out before graduating at age 20 when I was born. My dad went to work for a tractor dealer selling tractor parts, and my mom held brief peach cannery, telephone company, UC extension, and so on kinds of jobs. They tell me it was a struggle financially. My having surgery a couple of days after I was born didn't help (without modern technology, I would have died).

I was born in Yuba City where the community college was, then we moved to Colusa when I was one, then back to Yuba City when I was four, back to Colusa again at 12 where I stayed through high school. I hated moving. I grew up in working class neighborhoods with a lot of freedom. From the time I was six or seven years old, I could pretty much do as I pleased so long as I stayed out of serious trouble, and I mostly managed to do that. I hung out with what I would think of now as "the tough kids" when I was in Yuba City, but somehow avoided any serious trouble. I was the instigator - the one who got other people to do things but would not do them myself.

Once I moved back to Colusa when I was 12, the groups changed a bit. Because the town is so small, there is only one school at each level so it wasn't possible to sort by income as much as it was in Yuba City which is bigger. My social group cut across social strata and the groups stayed together from kindergarten through high school pretty much, even after high school. Because all social groups were together in the same school, I also began to see the differences in ways I had not seen before. For example, there was a nine hole golf course in town and a tennis club with a swimming pool and there were two groups of kids - those who belonged to the tennis and golf club, and those who did not.

I did not and I began to feel the exclusion. A lot of my friends spent a lot of time at the golf course (one would turn pro later and it was the gathering place for the "top" social group). I could never go. Same with the tennis club. We'd all be together having fun, they'd go to one place or another and I'd go home. I hated it. On top of that, some parents didn't like their kids playing with me. I was poor, and a bad influence.

I did solve the golf course problem by getting a job there in junior high school. I picked up range balls, washed clubs, that sort of thing. The pro, Bob Billings, was unbelievably good to some of us. In exchange for working, he paid us of course, but he also let us play free whenever we wanted, gave us free lessons, and so on. There were several of us who worked there. Because of the pro, we had the best, or near the best, golf team in the state among all schools not just small ones for many years though I played baseball instead of golf. If you didn't have money, sports was another way to get noticed and have the privileges of money. My brother, a scholarship football player for Oregon State after high school, took advantage of that.

Back to my being a bad influence, and I probably was. I didn't have a curfew in high school, I could drink all I wanted and not get into trouble, etc. There was one mom in particular who wouldn't let her son hang out with me. His dad was an eye doctor (not sure which kind) and they lived in the small enclave of the well-to-do in town. I wasn't good enough for her son. That pissed me off, still does to this day, but I owe where I am to people like her.

At some point I made up my mind that I would prove to those idiots that someone with my background, my lack of social graces, with my lack of money, etc., could kick their butt. It was a determination that's hard to describe, though the language I slipped into there is revealing. I imagined going back to a class reunion some day and showing them they weren't any better than me. As I said, all the exclusion based on class, all the small town crap that goes on, all of it served to make me want to prove people wrong. It was a small town, a place where those with power and money (for the small pond called Colusa) persist for generations.

So, growing up I had a chip on my shoulder, probably still do. I was lucky though for two reasons. First, no matter what I did or how much I screwed around (e.g. in class disrupting others out of sheer boredom), school came easy and I was always at the top of the class somehow. Second, from an early age my mom knew I could go to college and began putting that idea in my head. I never assumed anything else, going to college after high school seemed a natural progression.

I was thinking about this yesterday and it occurred to me that I read every book that was in our house at least twice (all 15 of them...). My dad cannot write or spell very well, and he never reads. My brother was diagnosed with dislexia and I think my dad must have had similar problems growing up. But my mom was an avid reader. Unfortunately, they were mostly trashy novels. She always left them lying around while reading them or before giving them away, and she must have known that I read every one of them when she wasn't home. What if there had been real books in my house? Or if my parents had been educated enough to direct my reading? I don't blame them, they had no idea about books. I would have sponged up anything put in front of me, but maybe I was better off spending my summers getting on my bike and going and playing baseball or basketball and hanging out with friends instead. Who knows.

When the time came to leave Colusa after high school my choices were very limited, not because of academics, that would have gotten me most places, but because of resources. I was from the small town of Colusa, and from the other side of the tracks. A friend of mine growing up, the rich kid in our class whose dad was a big rice farmer in town, went to Stanford because a congressman got him in (I assume campaign contributions were involved - his grades and mine weren't that different).

Me, I had two choices, go to a junior college or Cal State Chico as it was called then. I chose Chico. I worked my butt off all summer after graduating from high school to save $1,400. The tuition was around $100 per semester and I had enough left over to pay the dorm bill (remember, inflation). My parents contribution, after negotiation, was $20 per month, though they did buy me a car and insure it. But mostly it was up to me. I did two things while there. I never missed a class, and I never missed a party. I did miss a day at work once though.

I did well at Chico, really well, but I was naive. This is going to sound dumb to all of you, but I really didn't understand the difference between Stanford, Berkeley, and Chico State. Where I grew up, there were two types of people, those who went to college, and those who didn't. It didn't much matter where, just going and getting a degree was enough. I suppose the "upper class" understood the difference, but in working class land where I grew up, such distinctions weren't drawn, at least not in my house. The Ivy league was for other people, and people either went to college or they didn't, to Chico, maybe to a UC if they could afford it. And those who went often never returned. When I hear Bryan Caplan say in his essay "What if I had grown up rich? ... I would have gone to the Ivy League instead of UC Berkeley, but it's not like Berkeley held me back," I have to laugh because to me, Berkeley was an elite school, a dream, not something I could ever do. My third year at Chico a faculty member took me aside and told me I needed to go to a UC school, Chico wouldn't do. I called my parents and told them, and they said, simply, that's not going to happen.

I had no idea how limiting coming out of Chico would be. I've seen a lot of graduate applications in my life, and mine was more than competitive as a math/econ/stat major with really good GREs and great supporting letters. But I was denied every place I applied and to this day I think that still affects my attitude about this profession. I can remember opening the letter with the last chance I had on my front porch and feeling crushed. I was going back to the tractor store just like my dad, brother, and grandfather. You can't get there from Chico no matter how good your record is.

Fortunately for me, I was working for a faculty member doing work for Medicaid estimating reimbursement levels for pharmaceutical drugs and he got to know me pretty well (he's president of a university now). When he found out I had been rejected everywhere, he made a phone call and got me into Washington State University with money, the place where he had gone to graduate school (in an afternoon - it wasn't until much later that I realized how much I owed him for doing that).

So, I went to graduate school at Washington State. It was a pretty easy program for me, I'm embarrassed to say I didn't work much on weekends my first year of grad school, so I took electrical engineering classes (graduate stochastic processes), graduate level math/stat courses, that sort of thing to try and fill in the missing pieces. That turned out to be a good decision.

It is considered a success if you move parallel when you come out of graduate school. If you come out of a 25th ranked school and can get a job at similarly ranked school, that is considered a success. Moving up is pretty hard (and, of course, harder the closer you are to the top) so where you go to graduate school can make a huge difference on where you end up. Coming out of graduate school, I went to UCSD and did a two year post doc kind of thing, I taught a grad course and took one at the same time. At the end of the two years, I went to the school with a graduate program that would (a) get me closest to my kids who were living in Chico, and (b) give two jobs since I was married at the time to an economist. Oregon was the best fit on both scores, and it was the time at UCSD, I think, that got the door open and got me here. This is a much, much better program than the one I went through at WSU. I don't think Oregon would have given me a good look coming straight from WSU, it ws the time at UCSD that did it.

This essay is supposed to talk about class and how it affected me. I am of two minds. I'm glad I grew up working class where baseball and football were as important as algebra. The kind of a background where we never once stayed in a motel on vacation, that was for rich people, we always went camping instead. Because of that, I am fluent in two worlds - I am always surprised when I go home how quickly my speech patterns revert. If I talked in class the way I talk to farming friends, I'd be fired pretty fast. When I'm at professional meetings or around school, my speech patterns are entirely different.

But there are still resentments hidden deep down because of the lack of opportunities I had. What if my dad had been the rich rice farmer instead of the guy selling him tractor parts and I was the one who went to Stanford rather than my classmate? On pure merit, we were equally deserving, so why did I have to go to Chico and work while attending? With the same record, would graduate schools have viewed me differently had my transcript said Stanford instead of Chico State?

I don't know if the people at the top schools really understand how they are viewed from the "lower" ranks. I think they would be quite surprised. We don't think the difference is purely merit based. It's not always a fair view, I acknowledge that, but little is done to change the impression by those at the top. We wonder how much of your success is really due to merit, and how much of it is because the editor of the journal was your dissertation advisor or buddy in graduate school, etc. There's a lot of "old boy" networks that serve to benefit a small number and if you are not on the inside from the start, it's a huge disadvantage. Perhaps it's hard to see from the inside.

My introduction to this was brunt. I went to UCSD out of graduate school and my first week there, at the Department party, another faculty member asked me where I was from. I said "Washington State." The response was "oh," in a way that made his opinion of that very clear, and the person turned, walked away, and never talked to me again. I even tried once a week or so later, but he didn't have time for me, even time to just be decent. If you aren't from the right place, there's is a lot of baggage to overcome, more than you think as a naive new Ph.D. from my background.

I used to go to NBER meetings, even presented, but I found it to be more of the same. I always felt on the outside and, though there were exceptions (and people I respect immensely because of it - they took a moment to be inclusive of someone from a lesser school - and I don't think I embarrassed myself when they did, I think I asked good questions, etc.), and I finally just stopped going. I was there to learn, not feel snubbed. It's less important now with the internet, but being from Oregon it was important to go to meetings to catch up with the latest research. But I never felt all that welcome, if that's the right word. That's too bad and there's really no reason to act that way.

So, yes, class affected me, still does. I carry resentments because of it, though when I see them I do my best to steer myself around them. As I look back at my life, going to a small high school, etc., the opportunities were different. When I write here, I find myself bristling against accusations of being part of the academic elite, one of those in the ivory towers. That's not how I see myself, not at all. I see myself as an outsider even here. The small town guy with the common sense that comes with that. One of my colleagues has a similar background, but mostly they don't. They are from the big name schools with big name advisers, their parents are professionals, etc. They grew up in a different world. My family is mostly working class with all the struggles everyone else has, and that's how I grew up. That's the identity I carry around.

But I also know how lucky I am to be here doing something I enjoy so much. I could never really complain wholeheartedly about salary, etc., not when you are from where I am from and feel as lucky as I do to be paid this much. Compared to waiting on farmers in the tractor store, well, there's no comparison.

Sometimes all of this can be used as an excuse, and it's hard for me to separate me and my choices from my environment. People at the fifth ranked school wonder why they aren't at the number one school and see the world as unfair because of it. People at Harvard wonder why they didn't win the John Bates Clark award and conclude it must have been politics, not merit. It's always easy to blame outcomes on the environment, on politics, etc., but still, I can't help thinking that while I might not have an entirely fair view of all of this, there are disadvantages due to class that are not easily overcome.

Comments

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5482

Male Baltimore Oriole Feeding Chicks
New York City--Central Park.

Nicely done :) Though narrower and more story shaped is always to be preferred, be pleased and fill this out over time though in story form, and tell us why when you have come to understand better your introduction was so "brunt."

[spencer]

God, does this ring true.

Because I went to the U. Of Kentucky and realized what you said about the way the academic market markets works
I went into government and later became a business economist.

Maybe this difference in background and understanding of the real world is reflected in why I like this blog so much and have completely given up on Caplan as somebody off in some fanasty world who has nothing of value to contribute. When I read his bio I felt sorry for him.

[Andrew]

Though I'm not far enough along in my career to have the job security required to publicly reveal my own past, just wanted to thank you for writing this. Pretty much completely summarizes my own class-jump, and the difficulty of operating in two completely seperate worlds -- one professional, one private -- and never really being comfortable in either.

If you have any interest in other's stories dealing with this same life situation, check out Al Lubrano's "Limbo." I think you'll relate:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471714399/102-1094002-1437753?v=glance&n=283155

[tom s.]

Fascinating (and not at all whiny). Thanks for posting this.

[Blissex]

«I don't know if the people at the top schools really understand how they are viewed from the "lower" ranks. I think they would be quite surprised. We don't think the difference is purely merit based.»

The sad thing is that the argument goes that having gone to Yale of Stanford instead of Chico or Miami is "merit", and in a meritocracy those who can purchase a Yale or Stanford education do have more merit, because after all better credentials are better "merit".

The instinct to protect the careers of their offspring is strong in the middle and upper classes too, and they are just a fair bit more subtle than the protected working classes (not many left in the latter category...).

[camile roy]

Prof Thoma, thanks for posting this. I think your openness towards discussing the thorninest issues of the day may be related to your skeptical view of the status quo that comes from your background. It's a strength, in other words. I had a lot of cross-class experience as well and I feel comfortable in multiple surroundings. I think my social location is my information, so this means I have more information - which can be confusing. But, people who don't cross boundaries of class don't even realize the boundaries are there, which is to say, they are not in reality. Reality may be uncomfortable, but it is the only place good solutions are found.

[JRossi]

Interesting post. I too grew up in rural northern California in a working class family but wound up going to med school instead of grad school. I have not experienced the hauteur that you have experienced dealing with those from elite schools, probably because in medicine you're judged by money instead of academic credentials(not that that's good, either). Also, most docs work semi-independently.
I'm sure you're familiar with the psycholgical and economic research indicating that money and status don't matter that much for happiness. And a few Buds on a hot day playing ball or at Lake Berryessa taste better than wine at a snooty cocktail party anyway.

[donna]

Bravo. If only the people running this idiotic country of ours were the Chico State kids, we might have a chance. Yale just ain't cutting it anymore.

[dryfly]

Yale just ain't cutting it anymore.

Never did. But no one cared.

I mean what are you going to do about it? Waste the one shot you have at living a life trying to swim up Niagara Falls or float around below the falls comfortably out of the way of the noise & the spray. I know what I've chosen to do... Let others knock themselves out.

But what surprises me so much about the neo-con agenda... is why do they risk their upper-class position by needlessly pushing 'reforms' that someday will force us 'wee people' to make the effort to take them down? We are more than happy to accept our station under them if they would only stop pissing on us... we just need to be sure out basic needs are met - they can have the rest. Threaten those basic needs though and we turn into cornered animals.

History is full of these cycles... but they still surprise me they occur.

[Steve]

"This is going to sound dumb to all of you, but I really didn't understand the difference between Stanford, Berkeley, and Chico State. Where I grew up, there were two types of people, those who went to college, and those who didn't. It didn't much matter where, just going and getting a degree was enough."

That was my thinking in college. You might have seen me rant in Caplan's comments section, my background is similar to yours. Applying early decision and other factors have returned the elite institutions to their former status as prerogatives of the wealthy. I'm not saying that many of the people in the top schools aren't deserving, it's just that they are not all that they are cracked up to be.

"...people who don't cross boundaries of class don't even realize the boundaries are there, which is to say, they are not in reality."

Very true.

[marcel]

This is fascinating. I grew up a faculty brat (just my father, mother was in and out of work as was/is true of many mothers). Both parents, each a child of of 1 or 2 immigrants, went to Chicago - for my dad because it did not restrict the number of Jews, for my mother for this as well as for its location. Children of Chicago alums of that generation were pretty well brainwashed, so I went there and then to an elite grad program, but never had much of a career.

My wife, on the otherhand, had a background that was similar to, though less hardscrabble than, yours. She went to a couple of not well known colleges, her parents not understanding that colleges are not all the same. Eventually she ended up in the same grad program as I. Much to her surprise she has had a very successful academic career. Unlike me, she understood the importance to career of both the social connections and the role of strategy in choosing research topics, and successfully worked both. (Despite my background, perhaps because of it, I thought that academia was all merit - brains + hard work - rotfl)

Consequently, there has been a substantial, though not complete gender role reversal in our family. I can't say that either of us are thrilled with the way that any of this (except for our kids) turned out.

One thing that this has resulted in is that our kids both (a) come from a much more affluent background than either of us did, and (b) have gotten a much more jaded view of the world and esp. of academia than either of us had. Both are currently in college, neither is a Republican, libertarian, or other kind of idiot, neither is focusing on a get rich-quick career. We both find these traits very pleasing.

[Live Wire]

Good story professor. I was introduced to the prejudice of academia in the following manner:

After graduating from a southern, public university I attended another southern, public university for grad school. On the first day of one of my first seminars, with perhaps about 10 students in the class, the very distinguished professor (a Yale graduate) asked for a show of hands based on our educational experience.

First he asked that any graduate of a private Ivy league school raise their hand. A couple of students did so. "You," he declared very smugly, "will be my best students. I expect 'A' quality work from you two."

Then he asked for all graduates of private colleges or large public universities in the northeast, mid-west and west coast. Three or four students raised their hands. "I expect solid 'B' material out of you few... you will need to work exceptionally hard to earn an 'A' in this seminar."

Finally he asked for those graduates of public, southern universities. I and a couple of others raised our hands. "You will be lucky to earn a passing grade in this class. If you have any hope of doing so you will have to significantly increase the quality of the work you're currently used to doing."

I would like to say that I was up to the challenge, but I knew better. I immediately dropped the class and signed up for a seminar that I felt provided me an honest opportunity to earn a top grade. But it did always strike me as ironically humorous that this Ivy-league professor was himself a tenured faculty member of a southern, public university.

I guess he never got over his own feeling of inadequacy.

[Blissex]

«Applying early decision and other factors have returned the elite institutions to their former status as prerogatives of the wealthy. I'm not saying that many of the people in the top schools aren't deserving, [ ... ]»

Ahhh, but the trick of the dissemblers is that most of the people there are deserving.

Why is that a trick? Because there are many more deserving people than places at the Ivy League, and while most people who go to a Ivy League university are deserving, the reverse does not hold.

In other words, if there are 10 people in the country with Ivy-level GREs, and 3 places at Ivy league universities, the choice of those 3 among the 10 is not at all fair, even if all have equivalent ''merit''.

The same happens in England with Oxbridge: all those that get into them have excellent grades, but those that come from expensive prep schools are around half of the intake, even if they are a minuscule proportion of all school leavers, and a small proportion of all applicants; put another way, about half of prep school students go to Oxbridge, but a minuscule percentage of state school students does.

I know a guy who was warped by being the only student in his 1,200 strong state high school in a working class area who was reckoned to have a chance to get into Oxbridge...

The trick then is that the chosen can be both deserving (they are among those with the best results) and unfair (some of those having the best results have an much larger chance of getting in).

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=6565&u=99|10|...

American Redstart in Flight
New York City--Central Park, The Pool.

Nice thread :)

[Blissex]

«I was going back to the tractor store just like my dad, brother, and grandfather. You can't get there from Chico no matter how good your record is.»

Well you see the natural order of things, at least according to some, is for people like you not to be uppity and to try and rise above your family's station, or at least to do so very gradually.

That is, with your Chico degree you could have risen to be a clerk at the county council; then you might have been able to send your children to Davis, and then they might have become managers somewhere and been able to send your grandchildren to Stanford.

Along the way some immigrants would have taken the tractor job, and their children may have been able to go to Chico, and so on. The climb up the social ladder is designed to be slow, because after all the immigrants coming in are not that many.

But by being uppity you have leapfrogged, breaking the ''natural order of things''.

«When I write here, I find myself bristling against accusations of being part of the academic elite, one of those in the ivory towers. That's not how I see myself, not at all.»

Yes, but the facts remain... :-)

«I see myself as an outsider even here. The small town guy with the common sense that comes with that. One of my colleagues has a similar background, but mostly they don't. They are from the big name schools with big name advisers, their parents are professionals, etc.»

Well, one point here is that you or your colleague have stolen a good job that by all principles of decency :-) should have gone to the child of parents that had invested a lot of money in their education at Davis or Stanford.

Note: only one of the good jobs is stolen: middle and upper class parents understand, reluctantly, the value of tokenism, but one token is plenty enough :-).

What middle and upper class parents dread most: some uppity guy like you getting a free pass, making life harder for those who have plotted a careful education and career course and invested a lot of money in it.

It would not much matter so much if opportunities for advancement were plentiful for everybody, but they are not, as employers have obviously been going for quite a while for a ''plantation'' model of employment, with a vast mass of ''bulk headcount'' at the bottom (many of them abroad), very few ''best and brightest'' supervisors driving them, and a tiny class of executives strategizing on top of them.

In this ''plantation'' model, the ''bulk headcount'' will have Chico, Chennai, Shenyang or even Davis degrees, will be fully interchangeable drones, with salaries determined by international labour arbitrage; the ''best and brightest'' will have Stanford or CMU or Oxbridge degrees, and will be making the decisions for the ''bulk headcount'' to follow, and with ever rising salaries thanks to their critical role and their scarcity.

Note: of course there will be an underclass, mostly immigrant, to do the menial jobs that even the ''bulk headcount'' can't be asked to do...

[anne]

There is an irony to what we ask done, and to who answers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/us/28fire.html?ex=1306468800&en=4c0cc51185768f14&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 28, 2006

With Illegal Immigrants Fighting Wildfires, West Faces a Dilemma
By KIRK JOHNSON

SALEM, Ore. — The debate over immigration, which has filtered into almost every corner of American life in recent months, is now sweeping through the woods, and the implications could be immense for the coming fire season in the West.

As many as half of the roughly 5,000 private firefighters based in the Pacific Northwest and contracted by state and federal governments to fight forest fires are immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And an untold number of them are working here illegally.

A recent report by the inspector general for the United States Forest Service said illegal immigrants had been fighting fires for several years. The Forest Service said in response that it would work with immigration and customs enforcement officers and the Social Security Administration to improve the process of identifying violators.

At the same time, the State of Oregon, which administers private fire contracts for the Forest Service, imposed tougher rules on companies that employ firefighters, including a requirement that firefighting crew leaders have a working command of English and a formal business location where crew members can assemble.

Some Hispanic contractors say the state and federal changes could cause many immigrants, even those here legally, to stay away from the jobs. Other forestry workers say firefighting jobs may simply be too important — and too hard to fill — to allow for a crackdown on illegal workers....

[Lee A. Arnold]

Mark you belong to an aristocracy upon which economic class can purchase no coign of vantage. I refer, of course, to the aristocracy of the mind. I grew up lower middle class in New Jersey over the river from Philly, in suburbs full of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, and still have over a dozen close friends starting from kindergarten and first grade: now that, I have since learned, is real luck. Some of them hardly bother to read or write and now drive trucks or work in the trades, and I still think they're all smarter than me! But what's weird about me is: I loved schoolwork. So I ace'd all my public school tests and went to Yale, where I met some of the richest people in the goddamned universe, and insulted several to their faces for being intellectually unworthy of where they had got to. I can tell you: there are people who have become investment bankers on Wall St., who really are not worth meeting. "Merit" is not exactly what is happening there! But on the good side, I picked up another small handful of lifelong friends too, and they too are all smarter than me. I felt Yale to be intellectually pointless in the Vietnam war era, and I was already becoming concerned about environmental destruction. Being from New Jersey means you already have a clear idea how fucked-up the world is about to become! I loved movies and theatre, and so I thought that I would become a playwright like Bertolt Brecht, and try to change things that way. Several psychedelic epiphanies and many, many cases of beer later, I realized that I didn't know anything, but somehow, I don't know why, I had a clear artistic/intellectual course set before me, which going to classes and writing papers could not properly map over. So I made the decision to quit school for good, but hung around three more years reading and studying in Yale's libraries. Then I hitchhiked out to Berkeley in 1976 because I started to get the ideas to animate a general systems flowchart language, general enough to cover and integrate several macroscopic subjects, and most of the clarity on complex systems seemed to be coming from out there. Indeed I finally devised a way to meet Gregory Bateson, and made him laugh out loud -- but that is getting ahead of the story. I ended up going into the building trades to pay the rent, first carpentry then plumbing, and spent the rest of ten more years reading in the UC Berkeley libraries -- almost every one of its libraries! -- figuring out what I needed and what it had to look like. By 1988 I had a 12-minute VHS cassette of hand-drawn-and-painted cel animation of the beginnings of Ecolanguage. (This is re-done digitally as the first animation at http://ecolanguage.net, eighteen years later.) I showed it to lots of businesspeople, even got meetings at Apple Cupertino and at the Lucasfilm educational division at Skywalker Ranch in Marin, but nobody would buy the idea. They could tell they were looking at something, but they couldn't tell what. And I was too much of an outsider, no credentials. And of course, we were still in the days of clunky old CD-ROMs, which couldn't present much animation. So I decided to make another big change and get out of plumbing by moving in 1990 to Los Angeles to try to get into entertainment post-production, which of course is image-creation and editing, so then I could have a job I liked for the long haul, where on the side I could animate my own stuff on the same machines. (Even 16 years ago, the machine I needed to make Ecolanguage was still beyond my own income--we have come so far with computers since then!) But the technological change that was already happening in post-production, plus the recession of that time, made jobs scarce. After pounding the pavement for four months in L.A. I decided to go back into plumbing, got a job the next day, and a month later I was puttering around alongside Walter Matthau in his garden, chatting with him about his movies, while repairing his hosebibbs. So I guessed I could be a plumber for a while longer! Since then I have worked for some of the richest as well as some of the poorest people in Los Angeles, I have worked for some of the most famous people in the world, and I have made lifelong friends within all these classes, and I think they are all, richest to poorest, smarter than me! One thing I have noticed that all of my friends have in common, from richest to poorest, from the oldest friendship to most recent, is absolutely no class distinction. None. I make no mistake: class matters in America, sometimes almost as much as race does. I have seen it. But even the highest economic class cannot perceive the REAL upper class: spiritual grace, intellectual clarity, emotional health. These are found sparingly, and without regard to income or position.

[Blissex]

I have reread your very interesting story, and I noticed a rather paradoxical aspect of it: that by your own statement, on the basis of unfettered "merit" you had been rejected by every graduate school you had applied to, and that you only got a place at a semi-decent one thanks to a favour, the personal recommendation of an alumnus working through an old-boy network:

«When he found out I had been rejected everywhere, he made a phone call and got me into Washington State University with money, the place where he had gone to graduate school (in an afternoon - it wasn't until much later that I realized how much I owed him for doing that).»

Every middle/upper class parent that has spent over $100,000 in fees and whatever else to secure a good quality degree, on a "merit" basis, for their child, will be outraged by your being so proud to have gamed the "meritocratic" admissions system of a good university. :-)

[calmo]

Not unwilling to comment on this thread, just unable to avoid the self destruct. I'm not so sure that the irony that Blissex addresses is the one that sinks me (look at this: 30 words without a detonation!). [Are the parents outraged B or are they taking notes? Are the parents' perception of MT's pride as displaced as your's?]
No. The irony is that the autobiography purports to be about the ex-personal conditions, the socioeconomic background, the stew, that prescribed all those personal triumphs/defeats. [It is like the 'Made any mistakes W?' question only several magnitudes larger.] There are so many 'self-made men' I would not trust with this question. [Too heavy. Listen to them for the humor of it all forchrisake.]
You feel a detonation coming?
Me too.
Thank you to those who (Caplan too spencer) provided personal notes about their journey in the social structure. (What did you do with your opportunities?) [Even Bill Gates can share this question with the dali lama, yes?]
Some can swim in this water better than others ...I need the flippers, the snorkel, the woiks.

[Bruce Webb]

Almost too much to process on what is after all Memorial Day. Okay, too much to process. Lengthy post touching on UC Libraries, class and education deleted.

Uncle Wes and Uncle Bud. You never had much but you kicked the crap out of Tojo in WWII and ended up sending some Webb's to college for the first time. And your little brother Kayo put in his time and did what he could. And Kayo's kid thanks you.

[Blissex]

It seems that I can't stay away from this post, which is so interesting, with all the ironies in the main text and comments.

I have just read a delightful entry in another blog:

http://asianprovocateur.blogspot.com/2006/05/we-live-in-nola-public-school-is-not.html
«we live in Nola, public school is not an option

Today I ran into an old high school buddy while blogging at a local coffee shop. He's married, and has a little girl who will be starting kindergarten at Isidore Newman, our alma mater. [btw, so weird that our school has its own wikpedia entry.] He informs me that tuition has increased yet again, and that one year of high school at Newman now costs up to $17,000. INSANITY.

I suddenly had the urge to study just a bit harder for the bar exam.»

Well, I am sure that for those New Orleans residents who cannot afford to spend that money, public school is an option.

I wonder however what percentage of Isidore Newman alumni end up at Tulane or equivalent compared to the percentage at a public school... :-)

Anyhow, if there is a sacred right in America for middle/upper class families is to have the privilege to spend as much as possible on giving their children the best "merit" advantage possible.

[Steve]

"In other words, if there are 10 people in the country with Ivy-level GREs, and 3 places at Ivy league universities, the choice of those 3 among the 10 is not at all fair, even if all have equivalent ''merit''."

This indicates to me that there needs to be more finely shaded criteria for admission. For instance I find it sad that subject GREs are being phased out. Also, my experience of attending elite grad schools is that the people there are not that much smarter. The labor economist Ronald Ehrenberg says that where you go to undergrad effects what grad programs you get into, and we all know how rigged the undergrad admissions game is.

[Steve Waldman]

Thank you for writing this, Mark

[Blissex]

«"In other words, if there are 10 people in the country with Ivy-level GREs, and 3 places at Ivy league universities, the choice of those 3 among the 10 is not at all fair, even if all have equivalent ''merit''."
This indicates to me that there needs to be more finely shaded criteria for admission.»

Oh they are already more finely shared criteria, and they work like this:

* Suppose there are two guys, one poor and one rich, both with the same Ivy-league level GREs.

* The poor guy goes to Chico, the rich guy goes to Rutgers, as the «finely shaded criteria» are the tuition fee and expenses.

* When the poor guy and the rich guy with the same GREs apply to Harvard grad school, the poor guy gets rejected, and the rich guy accepted, as the «finely shared criteria» are having graduated from a more famous university.

Of course this does not happen 100% of the time, but often enough...

[Blissex]

Oops, just closing the open italics. But also adding a comment:

«But what surprises me so much about the neo-con agenda...»

It is not really the neo-con agenda, it is more the anti-New-Deal agenda that has been there in the background for decades, and has become popular again among activists. Why this has happened is not totally clear to me, but some guesses below:

«is why do they risk their upper-class position by needlessly pushing 'reforms' that someday will force us 'wee people' to make the effort to take them down?»

As to this I have expressed several impressions, let me summarize possibilities:

* The obvious: it is just a miscalculation.

* After the end of the cold war, the home front has become essentially irrelevant and does not need to be sweetened with a share of the bounty.

* Ayn Rand seems to say that the poor are immoral parasites, so getting even with them is an ethical imperative.

* Workers' leverage, because of the enormous expansion of the potential workforce (women, immigration, offshoring) and of technology driven deskilling and replacement, is at a secular low and there is going to be no backlash or if there is it will not be strong enough.

[Timothy]

Great post, Mark. A lot of the stuff about Chico certainly rings true for UO. I didn't work as hard as I should've as an undergrad, but there really is a bias against schools without some sort of "name". Frankly, I'm willing to bet that I got more out of you guys being available and friendly with undergraduates than I could've gotten out of being ignored by professors at a big-name school. I really appreciate everything I learned from the department, so thanks for being a part of it. It's pretty interesting to know where you came from.

[dearieme]

Blissex, ".. England with Oxbridge: all those that get into them have excellent grades, but those that come from expensive prep schools are around half of the intake" YES
"even if they are ..a small proportion of all applicants" NO, they are about the same proportion of applicants as of those admitted.
"Put another way, about half of prep school students go to Oxbridge". IMPOSSIBLE. Do the sums. Not even close.

[Blissex]

«"even if they are ..a small proportion of all applicants" NO, they are about the same proportion of applicants as of those admitted.»

Oops sorry, I was not clear: I meant with «all applicants» the applicants to all universities.

What happens is that many school leavers do not even try to apply to university (it used to be that only a small minority did). Now about 35% of school leavers apply to some university. Of these prep school leavers are still a pretty small percentage.

The whole ''independent'' sector (which includes prep schools and a lot of boring denominational schools) educates about 7% of total pupils, and just about all apply for university.

http://www.isc.co.uk/index.php/5

Now, admittedly «"Put another way, about half of prep school students go to Oxbridge". IMPOSSIBLE.»

is a bit of an exaggeration, as it is only a bit over 30% recently. I must also add that I was talking about ''prep school'', that is UK equivalent of prep schools like Groton etc., for example Harrow, Eton, Shrewsbury, Rugby, ... (that is, not all independent schools, but specifically those in the so called ''Eton group'').

More than half of the students of these though go to some top-5 university, and I haven't seen numbers on how many manage to get into a ''Russell''-group (top-20) university (probably all of them).

Anyhow, let's look at some interesting numbers:

* The ''independent sector'' educates around 7% of school (at any level, including primary and secondary) students in the UK.

* The school leaver cohort is usually around 600,000 people, of which is about 40%, or around 250,000, go to some sort of university.

* Of the almost 40,000 from the ''independent'' schools, about 35,000 people, or 90%, go to university.

* Of the 220,000 from state schools that go to university, about 1.5% go to Oxbridge, or a bit over 3,000, which is around 0.5% of all state school leavers.

* Of the 35,000 ''independent'' school leavers that go to university, about 10%, or a bit over 3,000, go to Oxbridge, which is around 8% of all ''independent'' school leaver.

* Of the 260 students that leave Eton (one of the least ''academic'' prep schools) each year, around 90, or over 30%, go to Oxbridge, similarly for the other ''Etono group'' prep schools.

I haven't had time to collate the totals for the ''Eton'' or ''Sevenoaks'' groups, and compare how many/percentage go to Oxbridge, the top-5 or the ''Russell'' group universities.

BTW, I am talking England here, as Scotland, Wales, NI do things differently, and in any case their numbers are way smaller.

[HispanicPundit]

Great post Mark! I learned a lot from it and feel like I know you more now. Keep up the good work!

[Matthew Cromer]

My introduction to this was brunt. I went to UCSD out of graduate school and my first week there, at the Department party, another faculty member asked me where I was from. I said "Washington State." The response was "oh," in a way that made his opinion of that very clear, and the person turned, walked away, and never talked to me again.

And yet this is the sociological intitution (academia) we are supposed to trust to tell us the nature of reality?

You've made it quite clear what the standard is for how ideas and evidence are actually evaluated in the academic setting. Thank you.

[Matthew Cromer]

I wrote an entry on my own blog about my own introduction to the sausage factory of academia. Unlike Marc I decided not to continue with a career as a scientist after seeing how things really operated first-hand. I've linked and quoted extensively from this blog post.