Times are Changing

Some sixty years ago when many "first generation" college students entered schools like MIT the often met the old adage; look to the left, look to the right, one of you will not be here next year. Abject terror? Hardly. At least at MIT these students often came from New York where survival came from such admonitions. You made Bronx High School of Science because you had worked yourself hard from 5th grade upwards, you got into MIT because you were in the top 10% and had 1400+ SATs, the scores from the old days, and no one cared if you worked after school and did not do socially correct activities, your family needed you to.

Then at college most of your competition, yes competition, were from the same type of background. You were in the Silent Generation and often fathers were not home because they were at War for most of your childhood. Coddling was not what college was for, It was for getting a job and that meant competing again.

Now comes the new generation, supported by a multiplicity of Deans and other overhead players. MIT describes its "first generation" program. They note:

On a sweltering August day, a group of 16 incoming MIT undergraduate students gathered in West Lounge for “Identifying the Identity,” a workshop designed to help them explore their backgrounds and experiences as first-generation students. Presenter and MIT senior ... neatly encapsulated a shared strength on an overhead slide: “First Generation/Low Income students possess especially strong determination, persistence, and resilience. It is the ability to overcome significant hardship that makes us uniquely driven. Remember that.”

 Overcoming hardships were pandemic in the 50s, for "role models" were parents who had just gotten through WWII and Korea, fathers often so traumatized that their children never knew what had happened, and often the main driver was just to get a job, for there was always the fear of another Depression. Harvard was where the rich kids went, and MIT was the first generations chance of getting somewhere. Your only support was the fear of failure, or for many a fear of not being number one.

They continue:

First-generation students comprise roughly one-fifth of the undergraduate population at MIT. And yet, it can feel like an invisible identity, because some students believe that there’s a stigma attached to being first generation. “It’s hard to speak up about the fact that you are first gen,” says... Students that are also low-income may feel even more stigmatized. “Those issues overlap greatly,” ...

 Stigma is a rather strange phrase. Sixty years ago the stigma was that you had not learned differential equations on your own from a book you could not take out of a NY city library. Recall Feynman and his counterparts. Feynman was classic New York, first generation, outspoken, aggressive, smart, and the prototypical New York student even in the late 50s. Coddled would not apply to him.

Fundamentally everyone is a first generation "something". Get over it, After all, being first in something counts. But why must we spend more money and add to tuition costs making something of this, a non-issue in my experience. Why tell someone that they have been stigmatized and need help to overcome. It is just an extension of a victim culture to MIT.