By Keely Coxwell
“The reason why I do work that is really sometimes soul-crushing is that I do have to believe that in that is an opportunity for us to write a better story about what society we are going to be, who we are going to be,” Tressie McMillan Cottom said. “So if anybody is challenging your deeply-held convictions, take it as an invitation to remind yourself and examine why they are deeply-held convictions to begin with.”
On Wednesday, Oct. 18 and Thursday Oct. 19, Cottom gave talks based on her critically-acclaimed book “Lower Ed,” which is about for-profit colleges in America, and her experiences as an intellectual in the digital era. These on-campus lectures were part of the Brown and Haley lecture series. The first talk was given to about 40 people in Kilworth Memorial Chapel and lasted an hour, the second talk was in the Tahoma room to 30 people.
According to the University of Puget Sound website, the Brown and Haley lecture series originated in 1953, and was the first fully-endowed lectureship in the history of Puget Sound in 1981. The lectures are intended to make significant contributions to the understanding of urgent problems confronting society, emphasizing perspectives in the social sciences or humanities.
According to the University of Puget Sound website, Cottom is an acclaimed assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and she serves on many academic and philanthropic boards and publishes work related to issues of education, inequality, technology and more.
“Our committee — me, Melvin Rouse, Doug Sackman, Sue Hannaford, Kris Bartanen — collectively chose Dr. Cottom from an impressive shortlist of speakers. All of the speakers’ academic works are exceptional,” Shen-yi Liao, Assistant Professor of Psychology, said. “But Dr. Cottom’s work as a public intellectual, including appearances on the Daily Show and op-eds in The New York Times and The Atlantic, made her stand out as someone who can communicate these difficult issues to diverse audiences.”
“Tressie’s passion for this subject was clear and resonated with her personally, making it all the more enthralling, and I feel lucky to have heard her take on this important issue,” Alyssa Lederman said. “Further, I believe her discussion sparked important conversation and thought within the audience, pondering the issues that surround our own institution and figuring out ways to make a worthwhile higher education more affordable and accessible to those who may never encounter the opportunity otherwise.”
In 2017, Sociologists for Women in Society awarded Cottom the Feminist Activist award for using sociology to improve the lives of women. Additionally, her research on higher education in the new economy has been supported by the Microsoft Research Network’s Social Media Collective, The Kresge Foundation, the American Educational Research Association and the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research, according to the University of Puget Sound website. Cotton is not a stranger to giving talks; she recently appeared on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
In her first talk Cottom discussed the dangers and realities of for-profit colleges.
“I would like to get to the big story of what education means in our culture and our society,” Cottom said. “By virtue of the fact that we are here tonight we tend to be the converted; we believe. This is why you are spending your free time listening to a lecture. And that education has worked out for you; you tend to be on the winning side.”
Cotton is a self-proclaimed winner as well, but her work largely focuses on the “losers” when it comes to education, who tend to be the people who go to for-profit colleges.
“By 2010, 2.5 million people were enrolled in for-profit colleges in the United States,” Cottom said. “In one year alone they were attracting 76 billion dollars in student aid money.”
“The for-profit sector appropriately serves older students, women, African Americans, Hispanics and those with low incomes,” Cottom said. “By expanding access to higher education in the first decade of the 21st century, what we had done was not increase access to high-quality higher education for millions of new people. We had created an entirely new tier of low-quality institutions for people who societally we have decided are low-quality people.”
Attending a for-profit college hurts you more than helps you.
“Let’s say you beat every odd and graduate. Your life should be transformed, but in reality you are more likely to be unemployed than you were if you had never gone to college. When you are unemployed you are unemployed for longer and you have a higher debt level,” Cottom said. “On average when you complete [your degree] at a for-profit college you do not get a wage increase.”
“Dr. Cottom’s work is absolutely crucial to understanding urgent problems that confront society. Her book ‘Lower Ed’ is, as the title says, on for-profit colleges, but it’s also on the value of education, racial and gender inequalities and the crumbling social welfare state,” Liao said. “She uses both humanist and social scientist tools to understand these complex phenomena.”