Employment Guide: Russell: In the big club: Wealth and the job market

In the traditional Americanized narrative, college students are taught that they achieve success by their own merit. Or, in other words: Work hard and apply for those internships and maybe you’ll get a job. But let’s pretend for a minute that individualism is meaningless against a system with systemic barriers to success. 

 In both higher education and the workforce, affirmative action is instituted to prevent discrimination based on factors like race, gender and sexual orientation. But in a country where economic oppression applies to all three, basing affirmative action on class alone could be a necessary tool for improving the diversity of the job market and economic mobility in the U.S. 

 In fact, it has been done before, and it works. 

 Researchers at the University of Colorado presented a class-based affirmative action policy at the moderately selective college between 2008 and 2010. As a result of the study, the University of Colorado brought in classes of students that were just as diverse racially as they were socioeconomically. The researchers concluded, “The challenges associated with low socioeconomic status are different from those associated with minority status, and there are good reasons to seek equal opportunity along both lines.”

 If you’re wondering why economic mobility in America is such a farce, consider the fact that it starts early. According to Georgetown University researchers Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose, rich kids (students who come from families in the top quarter of the socioeconomic status spectrum) outnumber poor kids (students in the bottom half of the socioeconomic status spectrum) at a ratio of 25-to-1 at the top 146 of the nation’s most selective colleges and universities. 

 A research paper by graduate students at Stanford University attests that the top financial, consulting and law firms recruit new members almost exclusively at the nation’s most highly selective colleges. Thus, the same rich kids who dominate the nation’s top schools go on to dominate the nation’s most profitable corporations. As proof of this: nearly half of all Fortune 500 CEOs hold degrees from highly selective institutions.

 The upper classes’ denial is astounding, and predictably so, since it’s a lot easier to believe in a meritocracy when you’re at the top. But you have to be pretty egotistic and narrow-minded to believe that success is based on merit alone. Just take a look at the 1200 SAT score that got George W. Bush into Yale, or the fact that upper-class kids essentially buy higher scores with expensive test prep materials and tutoring, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. Or take a look at the nepotism on Wall Street and at the nation’s top corporations. 

 Sure, it seems like a pretty bleak way to look at the job market — and the world, for that matter — but for me, it’s one more reason to reject the idea of “success” manufactured by a capitalist society. Not to mention, it makes the lives of the rich a little harder when you criticize their privilege instead of applauding their merit. The advantages of the rich come at the expense of the poor, and maybe if the lower classes weren’t so mystified by the American Dream, we could  advocate for changes that disrupt their monopoly on the nation’s jobs and wealth. 

In the words of comedian George Carlin, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

Write Natalie at natalie.russell8@gmail.com.