
Cal State L.A. turns the most low-income students into top earners - burritofanatic
https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0124/Why-Cal-State-L.A.-turns-the-most-low-income-students-into-top-earners
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frank_nitti
I got my BSCS from this school, and landed a great gig within a month of
graduation. As a "re-entry" student on a tight budget (30 year-old working
food service), I met many others who were similarly driven to build the
skillsets and relationships to launch their careers as efficiently as
possible.

Anecdotally, I will say these factors likely boost the effectiveness of this
particular campus:

1\. Smart, capable students have the "inferiority complex" of being surrounded
by CalTech, USC, UCLA. They know they need to push harder to have equal
footing when stepping into the industry.

2\. Several of the industries represented in Los Angeles are more interested
in loyal, hard-working candidates than prestigious/elite geniuses. I have
talked with many representatives from companies partnering with CSULA on
student projects who have expressed this.

3\. Students I met were generally more interested in launching their careers
than in pursuing the quintessential "college life", e.g. parties, campus
societies

4\. Specifically for STEM students: the Los Angeles tech scene has deep roots
with the aerospace industry, as well as a lot of companies doing real tech
work without the flair of typical SV/NYC companies. I had instructors who work
(or have worked) at NASA JPL, AT&T, Boeing, Western Digital, and in medical
research at USC/UCLA.

~~~
aphextron
>I got my BSCS from this school, and landed a great gig within a month of
graduation. As a "re-entry" student on a tight budget (30 year-old working
food service), I met many others who were similarly driven to build the
skillsets and relationships to launch their careers as efficiently as
possible.

As someone working their way through the California public school system in a
similar situation, I've hit a roadblock with the math classes. Having no
background in even basic high school math has killed me, failing pre-calculus
twice now. Any tips?

~~~
oofoe
I was in a similar situation in college. What helped me was to do /every/
problem in the homework and check them -- many math books will provide answers
to even or odd numbered questions. It sounds like a drag (and it was), but I
also finally passed with a very good grade!

Also after you've done the homework, make sure you consult with your teacher
about things that troubled you. Having battled your way through so many
examples, you will be able to appreciate their explanation better than if you
never tried them.

Good luck!

~~~
syndacks
Slader.com also has solutions for pretty much every problem in a mass
published textbook

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akhilcacharya
This was a good article and despite the location of CSLA a good look outside
of the coastal elite education bubble.

Far too often the focus is only on the elite students at the elite schools
when its clear upward mobility, just in sheer quantity, is better created at
less elite public institutions like the CUNY schools or the CSUs. Hell even
the culture war aspects are overstated - the "campus free speech" pearl-
clutching is based on the experiences of maybe 5-7 elite institutions, and the
entirety of the "Asian discrimination in admissions" controversy is based
_entirely_ on the superiority of 3-5 elite schools.

Far more needs to be done to extend upward mobility to everyone in this
country and that isn't going to happen by focusing energies entirely on the
HYPSM.

Relevant - [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-
harvard/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-harvard/)

~~~
kenhwang
There's a reason why California has the CC/CSU/UC system split up. Each system
and tackle different missions within public education.

The CC system works for adults with many weekend/night offerings and a huge
emphasis on usable skills and trades. The CSU system is the budget/value
offering to young adults with a good blend of trades/liberal arts with a focus
on practical applications. Both of these systems are excellent for high volume
upward mobility when they're functioning.

Then there's the UC system which serves as the halo product that's supposed to
draw in or retain the best and brightest. This mostly serves to keep the
middle class from leaving California, or when that fails, draw in upper-middle
class from elsewhere.

Are California's "elite public institutions" doing less for upward mobility
than the CC/CSU system? Probably, but that's not it's main mission. It's
trying to preserve the existing middle class, which is arguably just as
important as raising the lower class.

~~~
DrScump
"The CSU system is the budget/value offering to young adults with a good blend
of trades/liberal arts with a focus on practical applications."

They also provide a cheaper way to get the bulk of your first two years'
credits in place before proceeding to a "four-year" university.

~~~
dragonwriter
CSUs and UCs are both four-year (plus, as both offer graduate as well as
undergraduate education) schools.

You may be thinking of California's not public community college system.

~~~
kenhwang
There's a not-public system? The one I'm aware of is very much public:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Community_Colleges_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Community_Colleges_System)

~~~
dragonwriter
The “not” was spurious; I'm not (and I mean that one) sure of how it got
there.

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SamReidHughes
The top five schools are all in areas with a lot of recent immigrants, of
course. That's the best supply of smart kids from low-income households.

~~~
tabtab
I have to agree. The first generation of immigrants are generally poor, but
eager for their children to move up the ladder, and do everything they can to
make that happen. It's often the main reason they came.

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obblekk
One thing I don't understand - if these universities are: 1\. Running at a
profit (growing endowments) 2\. A path to the middle class

Why doesn't the government just roll the profits from the current pool of
public uni's to new public uni's until prices start falling and demand is
satisfied? Seems like it could only be good for society?

~~~
jdale27
Public universities are not profitable. Quite the opposite: tuition and fees
cover only part of their operating costs; the rest comes from the government.
In California, AFAIK, public universities don’t have endowments. Government
funding of universities is seen as an investment in the state’s economy and in
greater opportunity for all Californians. That’s the story at least.

Theoretically they should be self-sustaining on the large scale: education ->
greater economic output -> higher tax revenue -> funding for education.
Unfortunately that hasn’t really proven to be sustainable in California for a
variety of reasons.

~~~
skosuri
UC's have an endowment (~$10B), and for UCLA (where I work), the state funds
contribute to about 6% of revenues. Tuition is only about 10%.

~~~
ec109685
That is misleading because they are counting their hospital’s revenue in the
pie. That only matters if the hospitals are generating profits the rest of the
university can use. Otherwise, the hospital is revenue coming in and costs
being spent with no relation to the education arm of the system.

~~~
amdavidson
The hospital does account for ~33% of revenues[0], but the Med School and the
Hospital also account for ~55% of total expenses[1] so it doesn't seem
entirely unfair to include them in the revenue stream.

0: [https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-
AFR-15-16](https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-AFR-15-16) page 37

1: [https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-
AFR-15-16](https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-AFR-15-16) page 28

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fidels
Highlight for me:

> One of the really striking findings of the study was, that you would in some
> sense really rather know where somebody went to college rather than how much
> money their parents make, if you wanted to guess how much money they were
> going to make in the future

~~~
CryoLogic
[https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf](https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf)

At the bottom of the study you see education is the most important factor in
career success for your first job. About 7x more accurate than parent's
income.

~~~
oculusthrift
hm, how much does parents income determine education though..

~~~
alehul
Why is this being downvoted?

To elaborate: if, hypothetically, one's parent's income was a huge determining
factor in one's education, and in turn one's education was the only relevant
factor to one's income, then there would be a 100% correlation between one's
education and one's income, and a statistically much smaller one between one's
parent's income and one's education.

Although we see that strong correlation between education and income, we
should evaluate the previous step through analyzing the correlation of
parent's income to your education, not the correlation of parent's income to
your income as that would be more indirect.

Please correct me if I'm missing something.

~~~
alehul
Edit: in the last sentence of the first paragraph, the statistically smaller
one would be parent's income and your income; sorry for the mixup

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base3
I had a privedged international education and taught at Berkeley and Chicago,
but the hardest working student I ever knew was an undocumented refugee who
started at CSLA and transferred to Northridge for his junior and senior years.
To save bus fare, he slept in the bushes at Northridge. Last year he got his
BS and found a good job. He supported himself through school as a sexworker.
I'm in awe of his grit and endurance. We need schools that can accommodate
hard-working students who succeed despite unconventional lives. And We need
such people of remarkable courage and character to become leaders in corporate
life. I'm proud to support the Cal State system with my taxes.

