Amherst College's Marx urges educational equality

By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer

Published on November 16, 2007

Greenfield - Public schools are suffering from an economic apartheid that is blocking many students' access to higher education, Amherst College President Anthony W. Marx told a crowd of professors and college administrators Nov. 7.

The American public education system - kindergarten through high school - is inherently unequal, Marx said, because schools are funded, in part, by a community's property taxes.

In some cases poor school districts spend only a seventh of the amount that wealthy communities do on their students, said Marx.

This imbalance in financial support for education is a growing obstacle to students' access to colleges and universities.

"Money isn't everything, but it sure helps," Marx said, as many in the audience nodded in agreement.

Access to higher education is one of the biggest problems facing the education system today, said Marx, who was delivering Greenfield Community College's annual Henry Steele Commager Lecture.

"Our K-12 system, our system of public universities and community colleges and private colleges and universities, are not linked in any fundamental way," he said. "No one is building a clear route from one sector of the education system to the next."

The inequities can be overcome if all institutions of education band together to create well-marked pathways from as early as preschool through graduate work. As community colleges are the most accessible platform to higher education, these schools should play a large role in this collaboration.

"There needs to be a new partnership between higher education and K-12," Marx said. "Community colleges are a key component in that you can teach us, both sides, about how to make this cooperation work better."

Some collaborations are already taking place.

Amherst and Mount Holyoke colleges are recipients of grants from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which provides funds to attract high-achieving, low-income community college students to the colleges.

Massachusetts has a formal agreement to let anyone who earns an associate's degree from a state community college enter a four-year state school. Many area colleges and the university have outreach programs.

But small pacts that benefit individual schools and their students will not address the larger societal problem of access, Marx said. He said there needs to be a larger effort on all fronts to make education attainable for talented students regardless of economic resources.

Marx acknowledged there are barriers to this all-inclusive kind of cooperation. Colleges and universities now compete for top students as well as top donations.

It will be difficult to break this cycle, he said.

The college president also cautioned against what he sees as a trend in higher education, the branding of colleges and universities. Too often, higher-education institutions are looking to sell themselves to students in a "consumption model," Marx said.

This idea of a college or university as a business detracts from higher education's true mission: instilling values and molding young minds.

"I see a higher-education system with a global reach. Every student will have the basic background in science and mathematics needed in the 21st century," Marx said. "If we can cooperate, it should be possible to ensure access."