Education not a great route to class mobility

via jae, who describes it as "A piece from the New York Times about the damning influence of social class on success at university in the U.S., even among those with intellectual and scholarship resources."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html

SAT coaches were once rare, even for families that could afford them. Now they are part of a vast college preparation industry.
Certainly as the payoff to education has grown — college graduates have greatly widened their earnings lead — affluent families have invested more in it. They have tripled the amount by which they outspend low-income families on enrichment activities like sports, music lessons and summer camps, according to Professor Duncan and Prof. Richard Murnane of Harvard.
...
The idea that education can be “selfish” — a belief largely alien among the upper-middle class — is one poor students often confront, even if it remains unspoken."

This seems kind of victim-blamey and armchair-psychologizing (discussing a woman who had problems with financial aid at her college and ended up being suspended):

Ms. Newton, Angelica’s former supervisor at the library, wondered if her conflict went beyond money, to a fear of the very success she sought. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was committing self-sabotage, but the thought crossed my mind,” she said. “For someone so connected to family and Grandma and the tamales, I wondered if she feared that graduating would alienate her.”

Diversity in the workplace

Via deirdre
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-03/job-applicants-cultural-fit-can-trump-qualifications

An audit staff applicant at New York accounting firm Ernst & Young was asked, “What are the top five cities you want to go to and why?” An online magazine asked an editor, “Where do you vacation in the summer?”

I guess being asked personal questions in a job interview isn't new. At my Apple interview I was asked if I liked pineapple pizza. But how often are "cultural fit" questions used to keep out people who are different?

“A lot of times, cultural fit is used as an excuse” for feelings interviewers aren’t comfortable expressing, says Eric Peterson, manager of diversity and inclusion at the Society for Human Resources and Management. “Maybe a hiring manager can’t picture himself having a beer with someone who has an accent. Sometimes, diversity candidates are shown the door for no other reason than that they made the interviewer a little less at ease.”

How ironic that "having a beer" is given as the example of a social activity a manager should expect to perform with an employee. A lot of people don't drink alcohol.

Interesting:

A 2009 study by University of Illinois sociologist Cedric Herring found that companies with the highest levels of racial diversity reported, on average, 15 times more sales revenue than those with less diverse staffs.