This is a good question and I'm going to answer it because I'm procrastinating again. Yes, *much* harder to make the jump from "unplanned kid of a poor mom and an irresponsible father" to tenured professor and author and guy who has too much product in his shower. Much.
But.
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But.
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The distance from where I was born to where I am is a big jump but others made similar jumps post-60s. But the intermediate jump - from working class to college educated - is not. This matters, because there's an unintended consequence here. Bear with me before flaming. /2
Think of it this way: My class produces produces fewer college profs (I think, I'm guessing on that) but has *far* more high-school grads and college grads. (On this I am not guessing.) In a way, that's a problem: when everyone goes to college, the Darwin problem kicks in. /3
I had talent, but yes, luck as well. On the other hand, the system was not yet glutted with applications either to college or to grad school. It was a chance to shine a bit (which is exactly what happened to me, when a prof pled my case at the last minute). /4
I'm probably not saying this well, but what I mean is that when there were fewer kids crowding into grad school, the kill-or-be-killed thing wasn't as intense. (There was class prejudice - I experienced it - but that's another matter for another day.) /5
I was lucky to go to school not when it was *cheap* - it wasn't - but before graduate school was the default setting for bright kids. High school was the lower limit, college was a privilege, grad school was the reach, a PhD was a giant longshot. /6
I kind of want to drag my colleague @dburbach into this because I think he knows what I mean, but with *everyone* going to grad school, it's easy for the most privileged to crowd out kids like me. I'm glad that I was there when it was less crowded; it gave me a shot. /7
@dburbach So, yes, harder for kids like me to get a PhD - and I wish there were class-based scholarships, but the world is what it is - but much *easier* for them to make the shorter jump to a BA, which in my youth was still, itself, a reach.
In sum, education is a land of contrasts.
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In sum, education is a land of contrasts.
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