The Years That Matter Most
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
What has gone wrong in our universities? And how do we make it right?
When Amy applied to university, she thought she’d be judged purely on her merits. But she never thought that her family background would have as much impact on her future as her grades.
When KiKi arrived at university, she knew she could be the only black woman in her class. But she didn’t know how out of place she would feel, nor how unwelcoming her peers would be.
When Orry graduated from university, he was told he’d probably land a six-figure salary. But he wasn’t told he’d end up barely scraping a living wage, struggling to feed his children.
Drawing on the stories of hundreds of American students, The Years That Matters Most is a revelatory account of a university system in crisis.
Paul Tough, bestselling author of How Children Succeed, exposes a world where small-town colleges go bust, while the most prestigious raise billions every year; where overstretched admissions officers are forced to pick rich candidates over smart ones; where black and working-class students are left to sink or swim on uncaring campuses. Along the way, he uncovers cutting-edge research from the academics leading the way to a new kind of university – one where students succeed not because of their background, but because of the quality of their minds.
The result is a call-to-arms for universities that work for everyone, and a manual for how we can make it happen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fascinating study, education journalist Tough (How Children Succeed) argues persuasively that access to an elite college education, which in the U.S. is popularly believed to be a meritocratically distributed social equalizer, is in fact distributed in ways that reinforce existing economic divisions. In the U.S., a college degree remains both a key to a secure job and a cherished ideal for many, especially high-achieving low-income students. But racially marginalized and low-income students face barriers to accessing that economic mobility, among them the "fickle and unpredictable" nature of admissions calculations; the income-dependent nature of SAT scores; the culture shock and "profound disequilibrium" nonwhite, nonaffluent students experience at highly selective schools; and the difficulties low-income students face in remaining enrolled. Tough vividly illustrates these claims with rigorous readings of data and portraits of individual students, researchers, staff, and faculty. He examines initiatives that aim to level the playing field, and finds that great persistence and time-intensive mentoring and teaching are required for lower-income students to succeed. In the final chapters, he calls for politicians shaping educational policy and funding to promote more equitable structures, drawing parallels with the public high school movement and the GI bill. His analyses of data are sound, his portraits of students and teachers sympathetic, his argument neatly structured, and his topic one with wide appeal. This well-written and persuasive book is likely to make a splash.
