Yale and the Underprivileged Upwardly Mobile

Yale Elite Series

The Power of Privilege by Joseph Soares, 2007, Excerpts

As Yale admissions dean during the 1960s, Howe repeatedly explained to alumni that Yale was an upper-class liberal-arts college for the education of future leaders. Admission decisions at Yale had to take its social composition and special mission into account. Yale was looked to by families in the upper-class for social reproduction. In an alumni convocation speech Howe explained:

“To those who have enjoyed the privileges of cultural opportunities, wealth, and social standing, there is no stronger desire than to preserve the same for their children, and admission to Yale is one of the best ways to do it. To those less privileged, identification with a prestige-laden institution is probably the most effective vehicle for upward mobility. But those who are experiencing such mobility should, we are constantly reminded, have unusual reserves of intelligence and stamina to overcome the frequently painful, disturbing aspects of the process. Most of us have a natural, genuine sympathy for the underdog, and yet it is when sympathy rules reason that we make our worst admission errors. There is a very thin line indeed, between creating opportunity and causing injury.”

The upwardly mobile were suitable for vocational subjects at state universities, after which they could be technicians or accountants, but America’s future leaders should be culturally prepped in privileged families if they were to properly benefit from the stock of wisdom available in a liberal-arts residential college.

Howe feared that the upwardly mobile, at a place like Yale, would fall in with a fast, hard-drinking set, to the detriment of their studies and meager bank account.  Ivy colleges as a tool of upward mobility were like a sharp hook that harms as it hoists the underprivileged; youths from lower social classes would not be well matched to the college culture.

Artist: Eric Drooker