Table Of ContentSaving Public
Higher Education
Voices from the Wasteland
Jennifer Ring · Trisden Shaw · Reece Gibb
Saving Public Higher Education
Jennifer Ring • Trisden Shaw
Reece Gibb
Saving Public Higher
Education
Voices from the Wasteland
Jennifer Ring Trisden Shaw
University of Nevada Reno Santa Monica College
Reno, NV, USA Santa Monica, CA, USA
Reece Gibb
Pleasanton, CA, USA
ISBN 978-3-031-05645-1 ISBN 978-3-031-05646-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05646-8
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JR
For my grandchildren
Cherish public education.
TS
For those who have been silenced and their experiences rendered invisible.
Your voice matters.
For my mom and my sister
RG
For my family: Karl, Sarah, and Spencer
“It’s the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing
hard to do.”
P
reface
Who are these “Voices from the Wasteland”?
They are 11 students enrolled at a state university during the Trump
era. They are working-class students of all races: students of color and
children of immigrants, who waded into a big and intimidating public
university with few family role models or financial resources to ease their
way. Sometimes called “New Gen” students, these are first-generation col-
lege students, all of whom have skated close to the edge of becoming
dropout statistics. Living a very old-fashioned American dream that is
becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, they are within reach of the col-
lege degree they hope will clear their paths to productive, meaningful
lives. But wealth isn’t their goal; rather, all of them express the desire to
contribute to the world. They are an endangered species: public university
students of modest backgrounds in an era of extreme economic inequality
and unapologetic elitism.
The University of Nevada at Reno (UNR), where the 11 Voices have
studied, lies far away, geographically and metaphorically, from the elite
colleges that each year send America’s future ruling class out into the
world. Most students here live complicated, challenging lives—certainly
this is true of the 11 students who share their experiences in this book. In
each case, their path has been made more difficult by racism, poverty, anti-
immigrant prejudice, or homophobia.
But these students have triumphed. They refused to quit and have
beaten the odds. Unlike the many similarly positioned students who drop
out and give up on the dream of a college degree, these exemplary young
vii
viii PREFACE
people found the inner strength to keep going. Their oral histories, pre-
sented here, reveal their struggles, their doubts, and the factors that
enabled them to persevere. As you will see, they tell their stories without
drama, without self-glorification. In their own eyes, they were all “just
doing what they had to do,” to become the people they wanted to be. All
but two have since gone on to graduate or professional school.
Their stories represent those of students at public universities across the
United States: an important and overlooked segment of the nation’s col-
lege population. What are their unmet needs? What could have helped
them and their less-successful peers navigate the world of the university
more smoothly and less stressfully?
The Voices are a diverse group, but they have at least one thing in com-
mon: people in high places never ask what they think about their college,
about our society, about race, class, and gender. They are uniquely posi-
tioned to identify and solve problems in the American college experi-
ence—but no one consults them.
So we did.
And what, exactly, do we mean by “the Wasteland”?
In this book, the word refers to two things. First, Nevada itself is
regarded by the rest of the country as a “wasteland,” something even
lower than a “flyover state”; and second, public universities in the United
States have become increasingly disrespected, devalued, and under-
resourced in relation to the very few elite private universities in the coun-
try. They are the “outback” of higher education, as the nation’s ambitious
and wealthiest students and parents regard the elite universities as the req-
uisite path to “success” in life.
Nevada, the state, has a long history of being overlooked and disre-
spected. If you ask most Americans what they think of when they think of
Nevada, the second answer (after Las Vegas) will most likely be “empty
desert.” The Nevada portion of U.S. Route 50, traversing 400 miles of
nearly unpopulated Nevada desert, was named “The Loneliest Road in
America” by Life magazine in 1986. Nevada has little water of its own.
The Black Rock Desert hosts the annual Burning Man Festival but is quiet
and empty at other times. Bumper stickers declaring “Nevada Is Not a
Wasteland” were so ubiquitous when coauthor Jennifer Ring arrived from
California—in 1996, to teach political science—that she thought this was
the state’s motto. She soon learned that the stickers were a response to a
federal plan to dump nuclear waste in the southern desert. Almost a quar-
ter of a century later, when the devastating Camp Fire in the Sierra Nevada
PREFACE ix
left Paradise, California in ashes and authorities needed a place to dispose
of toxic waste, they once again looked to Nevada as an available dumpsite.
Disrespect seems to cling to Nevada. But the 11 students interviewed
for this book chose to defy that disrespect by claiming it as part of their
identity: marginalized citizens all, they chose to put the Wasteland front
and center, in the book’s title.
With regard to public universities throughout the land: Nevada has its
unique brand of geographical isolation and a reputation difficult to detach
from its wild west past. But America’s state universities in general—along
with many of its non-elite private colleges—have become a metaphorical
“wasteland” of higher education, and that regrettable state of affairs must
change. We are aware that there is much more to higher education than
America’s most prestigious universities on the one hand, and the uniquely
American institution of state universities on the other. But those few most
exclusive private universities in the United States receive an exaggerated
amount of unquestioned attention as “the best”: best students, best fac-
ulty, best research facilities, best “experts,” most celebrity scholars. The
authors’ personal experiences have been entirely with public higher educa-
tion and, indeed, entirely in far west states: California, Nevada, Idaho. We
leave it to other scholars to study the multitude of private colleges and
universities, secular and religious, liberal arts and technological, which are
often, but not always, committed to teaching a broad spectrum of stu-
dents from different backgrounds.
We are concerned here with public universities in the United States as
the institutions that were designed to produce an educated citizenry
regardless of wealth and background. When that institution is threatened
with neglect, or overlooked by an arrogant aristocratic mindset, the
American democracy itself is threatened. In that sense, the goal of this
book is political. This is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of
higher education in the United States. It is a focused study of individual
experiences of students of modest means and students of color at one state
university whose mission is to educate the students of the state and region
as affordably as is feasible in the twenty-first century. In that sense, public
higher education is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the wealthi-
est and most selective American universities. How does the wealth gap in
higher education reflect the wealth gap in American society, and what are
the consequences for the future of democracy, if accessible and well-
funded public higher education is in danger?
x PREFACE
We explore possible remedies in the book’s concluding chapters.
* * *
We conducted the interviews for this book in 2017 and 2018 and wrote
and edited it in 2019 and 2020. We envisioned the book as a group por-
trait of some inspiring, resilient young people. Their stories, we believed,
would illustrate the struggles of many students at state universities and
their impressive potential—potential that is under-appreciated in America.
We wanted to give voice to people who deserve to be heard: people who
have lived under the persistent blows of racism, poverty, homophobia, and
anti-immigrant prejudice. We wanted readers to learn what these lives look
like, to better understand how these problems affect people in our coun-
try, and to let the students themselves define the problems and propose
solutions. The stories are intrinsically interesting. They may shock some
readers, but they will also inspire and uplift. Some of the stories may seem
extreme, but to students like our 11 Voices, the challenges are routine.
These are not “minority” students: they are the silenced majority.
The heartbeat of this book lies in the stories told here. The students
themselves are as diverse a group—racially, economically, culturally, sexu-
ally—as can be gathered in any study.
Our method was simple: students from diverse backgrounds would be
interviewed by their peers at Nevada, with a familiar professor listening in.
Rather than have an older, white authority figure interview the “subjects,”
we assigned the task of interviewing to a student their age, who identifies
as an economically challenged student of color at Nevada. Trust and inti-
macy developed quickly in each of these interviews. The students identify
as Black, Latinx, mixed race, Punjabi, Filipino, European-American, immi-
grants, children of immigrants, queer, straight, and poor; a couple of them
consider themselves “pretty well off.” Not all are Native Nevadans. They
hail from all over the west (Nevada, California, Washington, Texas), as
might be expected of students attending a state university in this region.
Like their counterparts in other states, our 11 Voices came from modest
backgrounds and were determined to earn undergraduate degrees with
very little in the way of support or advantages. Yet there is no single, uni-
versal story that fits all public university students: there are only individual
narratives that can help us recognize common patterns. In this way, with
this project, Nevada can serve as a microcosm of the rest of the nation.
PREFACE xi
The book contains the stories of 11 exceptionally resilient young peo-
ple, who should not have needed to be as exceptional as they are. The
American educational system left many obstacles in their way, but they
forged ahead and earned their college degrees in spite of everything.
Although they struggled, their stories will inspire young students who
have hopes for the future that are circumscribed by the sense that higher
education is out of reach for them. Our 11 Voices will show them that the
dream is not only for the privileged.
* * *
When we began our project, we hoped that the interviews would enable
us to identify a core of resiliency: a common thread among the storytellers
that would show us what enables some people to succeed against the odds.
What does it take to go the distance, when so many others succumb to the
burdens of poverty, racism, and lack of access to resources? What gives
some young people confidence in themselves and the ability to maintain
good cheer and generous spirits as they overcome obstacle after obstacle?
Why do some people keep treading water while others give up hope and
sink below the surface?
We wish we could say that we managed to identify that “secret sauce.”
Unfortunately, we didn’t. But we did identify some more subtly flavored
themes, unavailable at a fast-food franchise.
As we were editing the interviews for this book, the pandemic swept
over the nation and the world. We worried that the global crisis might
render our project moot. But far from it. The problems these 11 students
faced were common before 2020, but the coronavirus brought their
struggles into even sharper relief. When the university closed and asked
students to shelter at home, the poorest students—predominantly stu-
dents of color—were the ones least likely to have a home to retreat to.
Instead of relying on their parents for support, many of these students
became responsible for supporting their entire families, as parents lost
work, health insurance, and homes. Yet, under pressure that could easily
have crushed them, these remarkable students managed to continue their
academic work, even as they took on heavy new responsibilities. We can’t
say precisely where their grit comes from, but we can certainly admire
their powerful commitment to themselves, to their families, and to their
communities.
