You heard about the letter: Princeton alumna Susan Patton worries that Princeton women might not find husbands as smart as they are if they don’t find ’em while still at college. Behind her anxiety is the view that: one, marriage is a partnership (between two different sexes) of intellectual equals—and, two, college sorts people into roughly equal intellectual groups.
I’ve been listening to lots of fun commentary about the Patton letter when I am not pondering other news about troubles in elite education. A week before the Patton letter, Carolyn Hoxby and Christopher Avery (Stanford and Harvard; they must be smart!) presented new information about how elite colleges are failing to recruit students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Hoxby and Avery report that among the high achieving high school students, only 34 percent of those from low-income families end up at the fancy colleges that their extremely high grades and high test scores would qualify them for. This is less than half the rate for “achievers” from high-income families, where 78 percent go to top-tier schools. The smart students in the bottom income quarter go, instead, to local universities or community colleges. These economically disadvantaged kids, Hoxby and Avery believe, are not aware of the elite educational options, and don’t appear to have information about how much aid is available from the most elite schools.
So for women who recognize that rushing into marriage really is not a smart thing to do, but are worried that they can’t find smart partners if they aren’t at Princeton or the like, they can relax, slow it down, and realize that there are a lot of smart potential partners who are not at elite schools. Not even counting all those smart men who don’t even start (or start but don’t finish) college, given the growing gender gap in higher education. It turns out that there are lots of smarties who aren’t at elite and selective colleges.
But, Patton might still be worried. Part of me thinks that she might be saying “smart” kids but meaning kids from a “higher social class.”
Patton’s letter reminds me that the heteronormative dream (Girls! Find your ideal boy!) is still profoundly concerned about matching on social class as much as it is about finding an intellectual (or some other human quality) peer. But what do I know? My boyfriend went to Princeton.
Comments 3
Tom — April 10, 2013
Right, find the right boy and be saved.
Twenty something boys should be avoided, especially the ones who convince themselves and others they are smart.
Elisabeth Kinsey — April 10, 2013
I've worked my entire life to be teaching in Higher Ed. and my husband has a degree in construction management he got through a payout on a job accident. We see eye to eye because we both lived in Germany, we are both ENFJ's and both love the same dumb jokes. I used to sit in on lectures at Princeton when I was a nanny for a family there. I was accepted to DU with grants and scholarships but still would have gone into debt to the tune of 40 thousand a year. I went to a state college instead. I still have that debt, even. I will never shed my worked-from-the-bottom-up-status. Nor will my husband, because it defines us as tenacious and keeps us in check for all our future goals. Still, I think the ENFJ is the glue. And, we don't complete one another (like the terrible Jerry McGuire anecdote suggests all relationships should do).
Deborah Siegel — April 14, 2013
Very well put, Virginia. But hey, what do you know? Your bf went to Princeton. HA!