She is not proof of the American dream.
 | By Rachel Poser Sunday Review Editor, Opinion |
In 2018, Tara Westover published a memoir that, to her great surprise, became a best seller. Born to Mormon parents in Idaho who did not believe in medicine and kept her out of school, Westover grew up hauling scrap metal in her father's junkyard, helping her mother brew herbal remedies and trying to avoid confrontation with a violent older brother. Determined to get a formal education, she taught herself enough math and grammar to take the ACT, and was accepted to Brigham Young University, where she entered a classroom for the first time — at age 17. She went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. |
"A curious thing happens when you offer up your life for public consumption," Westover writes in a guest essay today. "People start to interpret your biography, to explain to you what they think it means." Westover's memoir, "Educated," was widely celebrated as inspiring proof that the American dream remains within reach for anyone with grit and ambition; it showed, according to a review in USA Today, "that some people are flat-out, boots-always-laced-up indomitable." |
But that was not the lesson Westover took from her own life. In today's essay, she sets the record straight: "My story is proof," she writes, "not of the persistence of the American dream, but of its precarity, even its absence." |
Westover explains that her education was nearly derailed not only by the idiosyncrasies of her family but also by the cost of a college degree in the United States. Over the past 30 years, tuition at four-year colleges and universities has more than doubled, even after accounting for inflation. Federal Pell grants, which used to cover nearly 80 percent of tuition for low-income students, now pay only 29 percent. Even Brigham Young, one of the most affordable four-year colleges in the country because it is heavily subsidized by the Mormon Church, has become expensive enough in recent years that Westover doubts she would make it to graduation if she were a student there today. |
Westover urges us to lower the cost of college, reduce student debt and change the conversation around higher-ed so that we stop sending the message to poor students that their inability to afford college is a personal failure. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
Contact us If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment