Melissa Osborne — The Hidden Cost of Social Mobility with Melissa Osborne

[00:00:00] Melissa Osborne: Social mobility does something to people, right? This is a thing that happens to people all of the time, to varying different degrees, but it does something to us, right? And we don’t talk about it that way. I was able to produce enough data and kind of weave together these students’ stories to be like, here’s one very extreme set of examples of this, but this is part of a larger, bigger thing that is what social mobility is.

[00:00:27] Melissa Osborne: And social mobility involves an economic, a social, and a cultural component, right? . Each of those components work together in a way that their demands on each level of what they expect of a person, of each kind of class status, right? As you like, move your way up, or down for downward mobility. It’s going to change people.

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[00:00:46] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, [00:01:00] and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.

[00:01:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back on this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:01:22] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m chatting with Melissa Osborne PhD. Melissa’s an associate professor of sociology at Western Washington University and education and organizational consultant. Her primary research centers on social mobility, inequality, stratification, class, culture, and the role that organizations play in shaping individuals pathways and experiences.

[00:01:45] Jonathan DeYoe: Melissa was a first gen college student from a working class background that started her academic trajectory as a non-traditional adult learner. We’re gonna hear a little bit more about that in community college. Melissa is an alumna of the Jack Kent Cook [00:02:00] Foundation and received her AA from Umpqua Community College.

[00:02:03] Jonathan DeYoe: I love that word, the bank Umpqua. I love that word. In 2010 and her BA from Reed College, 2013, MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, 2015, 2019 respectively. I wanted to have Melissa on the Mindful Money Podcast to talk about her book, Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility. Melissa, welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:26] Melissa Osborne: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[00:02:28] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, excellent. So first, just before we get into a bunch of stuff, where are you calling in from? , where do you call home?

[00:02:35] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, so I live in Western Bellingham. I’m at Western Washington University. We’re just south of the Canadian border. So I’ve, I’m a Pacific North Westerner, left for a while for graduate school, but am back here in the trees.

[00:02:48] Jonathan DeYoe: You grew up there? I.

[00:02:50] Melissa Osborne: I did, I grew up in Oregon. , so kind of in regionally, uh, similar but , very different kind of place than Bellingham.

[00:02:57] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. , so this may be a, an odd [00:03:00] question to ask of an academic, but again, , we try to normalize this conversation around money a little bit. So what, I’m curious, what you learned about money or even entrepreneurship when you were growing up in Oregon?

[00:03:08] Melissa Osborne: Oh man, nothing. Uh, yeah, so I grew up, , in a working class household, , in a very rural part of Oregon that at the time, , kind of in the eighties, , was a lumber industry that was facing a lot, , of challenges. , and is now, you know, kind of a dying, completely dead industry. And in fact, all of the lumber mills have left the area that I’m originally from. , yeah. So in my household growing up, we didn’t talk about money. , nobody taught me about money. I didn’t actually start learning about, . How money actually works until kind of in the latter half of graduate school. And I still feel like I’m trying to catch up. , I do remember in middle school, we had a class where they taught us how to use a checkbook, and that was the extent of it, where they were like, you will need to use a checkbook.

[00:03:58] Melissa Osborne: We were going to teach you how to do that. , but there [00:04:00] was no discussion of, you know, the notion of savings or, even kind of. How to budget for groceries or things like that, let alone the notion of, , you know, investing, , or anything like that.

[00:04:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I, I remember that class actually in middle school. It was a one, one semester class for me. It was one semester class. It was one third, basically, how do you balance a checkbook? , one third was cooking and one third was God, some, something else. Maybe it was homemaking or.

[00:04:31] Melissa Osborne: Hmm. we had typing as part of our third.

[00:04:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Very important. All critical skills,

[00:04:38] Melissa Osborne: so important.

[00:04:39] Jonathan DeYoe: and that’s the sum total of the financial education. Most of us receive how to balance a checkbook and nobody balances a checkbook anymore. It’s so

[00:04:47] Melissa Osborne: No.

[00:04:47] Jonathan DeYoe: interesting. So I’m wondering if you could think back to. an experience, not necessarily a class or a, , dedicated lesson, but an experience you with your parents or you with a [00:05:00] parent shopping for groceries , or shopping for a pair of jeans that sort of, that you could take a lesson from, or that you might have taken a lesson from.

[00:05:08] Melissa Osborne: I think that kind of. Growing up, there are a couple of moments, , when essentially. Things were presented to me as a choice, right? So it was, you know, you, we have to go shopping for school clothes, right? you really want this like, list of things that you would like to have. Um, we are not going to be able to afford all of those things. And so you need to prioritize what it is that you want.

[00:05:35] Melissa Osborne: Right. , my parents were, very much so like, okay, we’re, you know, you obviously are going to get. New socks and underwear, , and basic things that you need. , but if you want, you know, that cooler t-shirt, , then you could have the cooler t-shirt or you could have three not cool t-shirts.

[00:05:52] Melissa Osborne: , in later elementary school and then into middle school, that was, you know, kind of the theme of things for me that stuck with me in a way that, , [00:06:00] eventually became pretty helpful. Right? That it’s like, oh, you know, , you have to actually prioritize and rank things in order of necessity and the necessity of coolness when you’re 12. You know, I definitely, the first year was like, great, I’ll have the cool t-shirt and not the three uncool t-shirts. And then very quickly realized, oh no, I don’t have enough t-shirts. Uh, and so I took the less cool route, , the following year, you know, and so I think that that, is something I, I mean, yeah, talking about it, I’m having like sensory memory going back to, you know, I think the JC Penny,

[00:06:32] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh yeah, me too.

[00:06:33] Melissa Osborne: Yeah.

[00:06:34] Jonathan DeYoe: Kudos for you for, uh, choosing the less cool route the next year. I don’t think many of us learn that lesson that quickly. That’s, uh, good. So I want to get into the, the research in the book, but , before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about your story? Because it’s not really just academic research for you, it’s like it’s part of who you are.

[00:06:52] Jonathan DeYoe: So tell us about your college experience.

[00:06:54] Melissa Osborne: , yeah, so I guess to, to explain my college experience, I have to rewind a little bit. , , I grew up in [00:07:00] this, , rural, , small town in series of small towns, , in southern Oregon. , and I ended up dropping out of school. , the last grade that I completed was eighth grade. , so I did part of ninth grade.

[00:07:11] Melissa Osborne: Didn’t make it all the way through. and then, you know, I did alternative school for a little bit that didn’t work out either. , and then I worked, . , and I, you know, at a certain point was moved up and down the west coast and ended up back in my hometown. and I was a young single mom.

[00:07:29] Melissa Osborne: , and was working, in, you know, kind of wage labor jobs. I’ve worked in factories and in lots of food service and things like that, and, , was back into that kind of work, and was, you know, very kind of concerned about , the future for myself, but mostly for my daughter. Right. And it was very like,, we’re back where I started this town and this kind of life that. We have , does not offer a lot of opportunities. , and although I hadn’t gone to school, , as long as I was supposed to, , in K through 12, you know, the [00:08:00] kind of larger cultural narrative that like school, , and higher education is a pathway towards mobility, , was something that had stuck with me.

[00:08:07] Melissa Osborne: And so I was, working in a, in a restaurant, and decided that I wanted to try community college. , I had gotten my GED when I was 16 and had, , had done a quarter of community college, , immediately after because it was free and my family was insistent that I needed to do it. And then I failed all of my classes, , because I was 16 and did not wanna be in school at that time. And instead, you know, wanted to hang out with people or, , go do. Somewhat delinquent things, you know, and so I went back to the community college that I had gone to, , at Qua Community College. And, , there was one class that fit my work schedule and it was the sociology of race, class, and ethnicity.

[00:08:51] Melissa Osborne: , and at this point I was in, , kind of in that mid to late twenties, , age and. I decided, you know, I’m gonna give this class a shot and if [00:09:00] it works out, then maybe I’ll go to school. , when I started community college, you know that it’s open enrollment, but they asked me, you know, you have to declare a major.

[00:09:08] Melissa Osborne: And I, , I tell my students this all the time that my originally declared major was dental hygiene. Right, dental hygiene actually is one of those degrees that the cost benefit analysis in terms of how much time you spend in school versus how much money you end up making in most, places is actually a really good ratio.

[00:09:24] Melissa Osborne: And so I was like, oh, then that is obviously why one goes to school, is to, you know, pursue something that they care nothing about. , but want to make money. Thankfully, , sociology saved me and I never had to look at anybody’s teeth, , because that’s. A hundred percent not for me. , and so I took this class and it was amazing and it sounds very lifetime movie, but it completely changed my life, right?

[00:09:46] Melissa Osborne: So it gave me all these concepts and ideas, , for kind of understanding the world around me, and particularly understanding inequality, right? Both socioeconomic and racial inequality and other forms of inequality that I really had seen in my own community growing [00:10:00] up. , you know, growing up in the eighties and nineties in a rural working class space where there’s a lot of folks that are living in pretty intensive poverty, , was very angering.

[00:10:10] Melissa Osborne: , but I didn’t have a way to understand it. And it started to open up kind of these broader, larger social processes and understanding kind of, , how, , structural stratification and inequality works. I was very fortunate when I took that class, the professor. Emory Smith was, , in addition to being a grizzled old Marxist, was a, uh, a non-traditional student himself.

[00:10:31] Melissa Osborne: And, uh, was like, Hey, you could get a PhD. And I had no idea what that meant. , but I was like, that seems better than working at a restaurant. and there happened to be somebody that worked in financial aid as a work study that was also in the course. , ’cause I paid out of pocket for that class and she was like, you’re a single mom.

[00:10:49] Melissa Osborne: you can get financial aid, you could go to school for free. And so, you know, I ended up filling out my FAFSA and doing all of that. And, um. Went to community [00:11:00] college and, , thrived there, there were a lot of really amazing, , dedicated faculty. , and it turned out I was pretty good at school, once put into the

[00:11:08] Melissa Osborne: situation, which I had the support and resources I need. And so I transferred from there, , to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. . I, , was able to do that because I was selected for a Jack Hank Cook Scholarship. , they’re, , a large holistic scholarship organization and they offer the largest scholarship of its kind and one of the only ones for transfer students that is of any kind of size.

[00:11:31] Melissa Osborne: Right. And so they have the undergraduate transfer scholarship. They have a number of scholarships, a young scholarship, The college scholarship, they’ve got graduate scholarships. , but the undergraduate transfer scholarship, pays for, I mean, it paid for my full tuition, , and living expenses while I was at Reed College, , which is a pretty big sticker price.

[00:11:48] Melissa Osborne: , and, , once you become a scholar, , you can apply for their advanced scholarships. So I received a graduate scholarship from them as well. , and so I went to Reed and I got my bachelor’s degree in sociology. Continued to love it and was like, great. I’m [00:12:00] totally gonna get a PhD. Still didn’t really fully know what that meant, but was like, this seems great. , and, , my wife and then two kids and I, , we adopted a teenage boy, kind of in the process. We moved to Chicago and I went to graduate school there, and now I’m a professor, which is wild.

[00:12:16] Melissa Osborne: Um,

[00:12:17] Jonathan DeYoe: that, that’s, that’s dropped out in, you said, eighth or ninth grade? Ninth grade.

[00:12:21] Melissa Osborne: ninth grade. Yeah.

[00:12:22] Jonathan DeYoe: , and worked, you know, difficult labor jobs. So how important was that Mentor e Emery Emery?

[00:12:30] Melissa Osborne: Yeah. Emory. Yeah, Emory, , is amazing and so are a number of other mentors that. At Umpqua, , NIAID again. Um, and then also I was part of the TRIO program, which is the federally funded, , program for, first gen students, low income students,

[00:12:44] Melissa Osborne: students,, with, different learning needs. , and you get, individualized, advising and you can get tutoring and all of that.

[00:12:51] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, so the mentorship through a number of faculty that were there, , but also kind of my advisors, , really, I mean, yeah, it, [00:13:00] I didn’t even think to apply to selective colleges until my trio advisor said you could apply to selective colleges. You know, I was gonna go to the University of Oregon, which is a perfectly great school.

[00:13:10] Melissa Osborne: , but, you know, it’s a completely different trajectory, , than, than being in selective schools.

[00:13:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, Chicago’s amazing. Like that’s, yeah, that’s a fantastic school. , I read the, I’m gonna see if I have the basically landscape, right? I read the story of, the polishing the story as, as one of identity culture adaptation, just at a very high level. Is that

[00:13:28] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, totally.

[00:13:30] Jonathan DeYoe: So there’s a couple different ways I wanna approach it.

[00:13:32] Jonathan DeYoe: One is from the student’s perspective. And then one is from like the institutional perspective.

[00:13:37] Jonathan DeYoe: So from the student’s perspective, maybe you can speak to this ‘, but what are the, emotional, psychological challenges that are faced by first gen low income students at these really amazing institutions?

[00:13:49] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, that’s a great question. So the book really tries to kind of center around this idea and going into the research I had, you know, my own experience and some kind of [00:14:00] gut instincts about like the broader process, , from talking, especially from talking to other Jack and Cook scholars. but I didn’t have the full picture at all.

[00:14:08] Melissa Osborne: And you know, of course, right, like. My own experience is my own experience. That’s not empirical

[00:14:13] Melissa Osborne: data, right? Uh, and

[00:14:14] Jonathan DeYoe: Nice anecdote.

[00:14:15] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, a nice anecdote. Whereas the book is 150 students longitudinal interviews. Right. So a little bit more than an anecdote, which is helpful. , And the thing is, is that right? Like I try to kind of open the book and talk about the experience of students by first talking about, , the way that we talk about social mobility in society, right?

[00:14:35] Melissa Osborne: We tend to talk about it in economic terms, , just like why I chose. That I wanted to, you know, for a moment, there was gonna be a dental hygienist, right? It’s about going to school as a means to an end, and the goal is, to capture social mobility, right? To capture the degree, to capture , the salary to capture the career, and we tend to talk about that as an unquestionable good as well, right? [00:15:00] Like, why would somebody question, , making more money, , right or question, , having a higher level of education. and what that does is that, you know, that has fueled the expansion of. College access programs and scholarships and that’s amazing.

[00:15:13] Melissa Osborne: But it also creates a situation where , the students I talk to and spend time with in the book, right, they head into college, with them and their families most of the time, having very positive frameworks around the idea of social mobility. A lot of them are thinking about like, I’m going to be a doctor, right?

[00:15:29] Melissa Osborne: I’m gonna become a doctor, not only a doctor. I’m gonna become a cancer doctor so that I can come home to my community and do oncology for children. , . So they’re thinking about their communities. They’re thinking about all of these things that are going to happen, and they, they’re, you know, I mean, they’re pumped, right?

[00:15:47] Melissa Osborne: For social mobility. , and then they get to these schools. , , you know, I was at highly selective and selective schools. , they get to schools and they’re very, very different than, , the students that they go to school with, but also the [00:16:00] environments. Right. And so, you know, I think I. Using my own experience when I went from rural Oregon to Reed College, which is in Portland, Oregon. , and is, you know, it’s a small liberal arts college that prides itself on academic masochism, , and or rigor. , right. The space was intense, you know, just even being in buildings that were beautiful in that way, , it’s an unmooring experience for a lot of students.

[00:16:29] Melissa Osborne: , and what begins to happen for a lot of students that I found in the book is that, you know, basically by going to schools like this, , just in themselves, they are what we call people changing institutions. And they change students. That’s the goal of college. And if you look at any kind of, ,, website for admissions, they talk about how they’re gonna change students, right?

[00:16:50] Melissa Osborne: It’s about intellectual exploration. It’s about finding yourself, right? ,

[00:16:53] Melissa Osborne: but what they don’t talk about is how they’re going to change students in very classed ways. , for those students that are first gen. . Low-income [00:17:00] students. Right. And so, this happens organically through going to class, talking with professors, talking to peers, being in spaces where you’re learning about, you know, , there’s new types of art or food or whatever. But it also happens, , in a very targeted way now, and I kind of try to trace this back to the 1990s we realized at a certain point from social scientific research that, one of the things that first gen students don’t. Necessarily have the same amount or same type of as their peers from affluent and continuing generation families is this thing we call cultural capital, right?

[00:17:30] Melissa Osborne: So it’s like knowledge and skills and resources. It’s about knowing who doki is. , it’s about understanding interpretive dance, , as more than just people rolling around on the floor. , it’s about being able to talk about cheese in very specific ways, right? But it’s also about knowing what office hours are for and feeling comfortable and confident in these. Spaces where there’s perhaps gilded halls, , et cetera, right? , colleges and universities have created programming for that for students, and that’s great, , in terms of helping them align better with their [00:18:00] campuses, , thrive in academic and non-academic spaces. But what I found is that this becomes very surprising, , for students, the change that they go through, right? Expecting it. , that’s not the kind of change that we talk about on, admission websites, right? And so students can have these very, , intense realization moments, either individually or with their families and communities where essentially all of a sudden they’ve changed. , and it’s not all of a sudden.

[00:18:26] Melissa Osborne: It happens over time gradually, but we don’t usually notice micro changes in ourselves in that sort of way. I. And this becomes really intense for students and their families a little bit more intense than kind of normal quote unquote normal change that happens, , general change that happens in college because it’s about people’s classed identities.

[00:18:45] Melissa Osborne: And so what becomes up for kind of dispute or debate or something to be guarded against is this idea that students are changing into this category of people that perhaps, , families and communities. C is responsible for the complete, [00:19:00] desolation of an entire economy in their hometown, for instance.

[00:19:03] Melissa Osborne: Right? , so all of a sudden you, start to become part of the wealthier class, and you are those people that decided that logging shouldn’t exist anymore. That becomes a very intense thing for folks. And so I find that students, they end up being. Kind of stuck in the situation where, instead of cultural straddling or code-switching which is what we often talk about for students that are coming from underrepresented backgrounds , into educational spaces, More kind of selective educational spaces. Students talk about how that’s actually becomes kind of impossible for them and instead they become trapped between two worlds, right? Because in order to be able to actually attain the social mobility that they’re after and like get the promise of that college degree that they’re going through, they have to change, right? but they also are being pushed and feel the need to stay authentic, right? To. To who they were, and who their communities are. And that creates a [00:20:00] lot of, uh, pressure for folks, but also, you know, can create negative mental health outcomes. Students end up feeling like they need to transfer to less selective schools, or , , the conflict with their families become so bad that they, you know, reduce contact or cut ties with them. , and kind of all the while that they’re doing this, they’re still. You know, studying for midterms and doing, , calculus psets and, trying to apply to grad schools and also trying to afford going out for pizza or, you know, buying a winter coat. And so kind of these

[00:20:34] Melissa Osborne: things that we already knew about first gen students, , , that really impact their experiences, , , and kind of their outcomes that we tend to measure. This kind of more socio-emotional, larger kind of cultural process, , I at least make the argument that is a piece of why we continue to see outcomes for these students, , kind of staying statically below their peers, even with these kinds of interventions.

[00:20:58] Jonathan DeYoe: So statically below their new [00:21:00] peers. Yeah.

[00:21:00] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, they’re new peers soon.

[00:21:02] Is it a binary choice or , do some students find a balance between, , obviously there’s some students that, find a balance between, you know, old identity and new identity. , I’m wondering if, is this different than.

[00:21:16] Jonathan DeYoe: Other kinds of uncomfortable growth and how is it different than, than other kinds of uncomfortable growth?

[00:21:24] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, that’s great. , so I mean, it’s very much a spectrum, ? , there are a number of students that I talk to that do just fine with this, right? , you know, they’re like, this is a totally fine thing. , and honestly, the amount that I’m changing isn’t all that much, , relative to, you know, who I am now. , and, you know, it’s not really impacting me and it’s not impacting my family, and it’s not that big of an issue. , I’m just gonna keep going. Right. Whereas some of them are into full turmoil and then there’s a lot of people that are kind of in the middle, right? Where they try to balance the, growth of their new kind of parts of their identity, , and the maintenance. Of kind of older parts of their identity, , and try to meld them [00:22:00] as well as they can. Most folks talk about how difficult that is and that this kind of stuck between two worlds, right? Because it is this thing that, you know, people changing, institutions like colleges, but also like prisons, right, are designed to change you fundamentally and you can never actually be the person you were before, right?

[00:22:18] Melissa Osborne: It’s just, it’s back to kind of philosophical ideas of you can’t step in the same river twice, right? And, you know, this is happening for general college students that are traditional age. It’s happening for them in all kinds of ways. ’cause they’re in adolescence already. Right. And so, you know, like you said, like how is this different than other types of change?

[00:22:37] Melissa Osborne: And I often, , when I present. the Book, I often, you know, get asked a question like this and, , I talk about it, in the best way that I know how, which is, there are a lot of students that come home and are like, mom, I’m a vegan, lesbian now. You know, and their parents, you know, might not dig that either.

[00:22:55] Melissa Osborne: Right. , and for different reasons. Right? So if we think about all of the different kinds of levels of [00:23:00] change that are going on, , like veganism, that’s just. Some folks are like, that’s foreign to me. I don’t understand it. Why wouldn’t you want to eat a hamburger? They’re delicious. , in terms of sexuality, ?

[00:23:11] Melissa Osborne: That can get into people’s religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, right? So that gets a little bit touchier, right? and then the class thing, right? So the, how I found this to be different because of course, these students are also telling me these stories, right? They’re like, I am a vegan lesbian and I am, my parents are upset about that too, right?

[00:23:28] Melissa Osborne: Or that they’re, you know. Political views are changing. . So that is a big one, right? That it’s like their political views are changing. Students are learning new concepts, right? Or they’re leveraging the idea of , like the patriarchy towards their dad all of a sudden, right? Like these are very normal.

[00:23:46] Melissa Osborne: Adolescent and especially college adolescent moments because you know, you learn new ideas, you learn new terms that maybe you didn’t have in your house growing up. You bring them back sometimes to lo them at your parents to be like, I am different. I’m [00:24:00] older, I’m these things. . . The thing about the class change that I found, and this is the argument that I try to make in the book, is I draw on Arley Hos child’s book, strangers in their Own Land, and she’s looking at, rural Americans and kind of the experience that conservative rural Americans have.

[00:24:16] Melissa Osborne: And it, it goes back to this idea of, you know, when I am talking to students and they’re talking to me about their parents. And their families and the interactions. There’s really this like classed identity piece to it that like hits at the core for a couple of reasons. One, some families, right, they get to a point and students get to a point where it’s like, wait a minute, Why is it that I now believe that what I’m doing is better than what my parents do or what my grandparents did? Right? Like I’m I’m being told by this institution, and I have started to believe that working with your hands isn’t good enough anymore. Right? Or that doing things that are not a college degree type job or even advanced degree jobs are [00:25:00] lesser than in some sort of way, right?

[00:25:02] Melissa Osborne: And that, . , hits on this larger cultural and social power dynamic around class , and occupation and ways of life, right. That, other types of, , adolescent change aren’t hitting on. . And then if you add the historical piece to it, , that some families. , start to become concerned, right? The, their child is becoming part of a class of people that have been the oppressors of their people, , perhaps for generations, right? , and it’s not that they don’t want their students to go through social mobility, and it’s not that the students don’t wanna go through social mobility, it’s that. We, they find themselves kind of lost without a, , vocabulary to talk about this, right? Because as a society, we are not very transparent about the way we talk about class, right? , and it all gets wrapped up in this big ball, right? That, because some of it certainly is about parents feeling like they don’t have control anymore, , in other sorts of way, right?

[00:25:56] Melissa Osborne: And one of the things that is interesting that provided, . [00:26:00] Good evidence towards kind of why the class piece matters. , and why it does get wrapped up in adolescence is the students that had gone to boarding school during middle school and high school. That they faced less of this experience with their parents while they were in college because they had worked it out when they were younger at that point.

[00:26:19] Melissa Osborne: And it got tied in even more closely to, oh, this person is a teenager and is hormonal and a jerk.

[00:26:25] Melissa Osborne: And so kind of their, the status had shifted at an earlier point. And so that became an interesting kind of piece of evidence for that.

[00:26:31] Jonathan DeYoe: How much of the, change is due to. the desire for moving up social mobility, , the desire for social mobility and how much of it is due to, , so on the student’s part or the family’s part, and how much is it due to institutions, , intentional, , providing avenues for that social mobility.

[00:26:51] Jonathan DeYoe: , then we’ll get into how we change the institutions.

[00:26:56] Melissa Osborne: Totally. Yeah. So I mean, I think the desire is there because that’s [00:27:00] what pushes people towards school. And , in the earliest chapter of the book, I talk about how students and their families make decisions about where to go to college, right? And so for first gen and low income. Students, the first consideration is money, right? And the students that I was talking to, you know, they, these are all extremely high performing first gen and low income students. And so they are all receiving significant financial aid packages or significant scholarship support. And so for many of them, the cost piece goes off the table right away, which frees them up to then choose amongst. The different schools that have provided them, , support and prestige is like the next piece on, right? If, money’s not an issue, then prestige is where it is, right? But what’s interesting is prestige, but also provability of like actually producing social mobility. Not just for people, but for people like those families.

[00:27:51] Melissa Osborne: Right. And so there were actually some families and students that had conflict or ended up choosing to go to a school that was less prestigious because their [00:28:00] family had never heard of the schools that they’d gotten into, right? So they get into Williams, right? Which is the number one liberal arts college in the nation is in a great school, but a lot of first gen families have not heard.

[00:28:10] Melissa Osborne: Williams, they’ve heard of Harvard and they’ve heard of whatever their local state school is, right? , and so they don’t trust, , that that institution is actually going to provide the mobility that they say they will because there’s no examples of that in their community. Whereas, you know, there is. A cousin that went to Chico State and he’s an engineer now.

[00:28:28] Melissa Osborne: Right? And so, , Chico State is not as highly ranked as Williams is, but they actually have proof that it will produce mobility, ? , so the first part is that they want the mobility, right? That’s what they’re doing, and they make very calculated, , and as informed as possible decisions, But I think that, you know, a big part of it, is the work that the institutions are doing. I think that, you know, if it was just. The students, or if it was predominantly the student’s desires for social mobility, I don’t think that we would see [00:29:00] the kinds of conflict and internal kind of, , pain that students are facing. , because they would just go all in and some students do go all in. , and some students go all in and still it. It hurts. , and it is strange, right? It becomes a very weird thing to be so different from the people that you’re around, . And you know, institutions are doing this intentionally and parts of it are unintentional. And it’s not just the movement of the students towards social mobility, it’s also the different movement of their. Communities and families, right? , , we have this with students that aren’t necessarily first gen or part of this book, right?

[00:29:34] Melissa Osborne: That a kid goes to college and then their friends from high school don’t go to college, right? And that creates very different divergent tracks, right? , , and a number of students talk about this, That it’s like, oh, I’m, not only am I going to college, my friends are not going to college, and their lives are so different now.

[00:29:50] Melissa Osborne: People are starting to have babies, or they have to work all of the time and., You know, I’m writing papers about,, ous or whatever. , and,, you [00:30:00] know, it makes a very different life. And then at the same time, the schools, these institutions, , there’s a ton of social scientific research going, starting in the nineties.

[00:30:08] Melissa Osborne: We do these waves where we’re trying to understand why are underrepresented students, both first gen students, but also students of color, why are they not doing. As well as their peers, right? They’re white and affluent and continuing generation peers. Why aren’t they doing as well? , and even at schools that have the most resources at a Stanford, at a Harvard, right?

[00:30:26] Melissa Osborne: Like why do they have longer times to degree completion? Why do they have generally lower GPAs? Why are they more likely to drop out? ? Why are they, , less likely to major in certain majors? Right? And, you know, social scientists do research in essentially three waves that come back to universities that say, first it’s that they need economic capital, right?

[00:30:46] Melissa Osborne: They need more money, ? So we have this, , increase of, , financial aid and, scholarship funding. , but then they see that they still aren’t. Performing, , at the same level. So, you know, social scientists go back in and do the research again, and they come back out and they say, ah, it’s social [00:31:00] capital, right?

[00:31:00] Melissa Osborne: So, , they need connections and networks and resources with alumni, right? , they don’t have that in their families, right? They don’t have families that work at Goldman, right? They don’t have. All of these things, they need that information. , they need connections to people. So we see this huge rise of kind of, , the networking stuff for students, particularly underrepresented students.

[00:31:19] Melissa Osborne: And it still stays pretty static in terms of their outcomes. And so social scientists, we hop back in there like we’re supposed to and we come back out and we go, ah, you love those last two forms of capital, man, have I got a capital for you? It’s called cultural capital. And that’s just the bucket that we use for everything else.. That Includes all of this stuff, including, , understanding what investments are, right? So it’s like how do you manage your financial aid, but also what is an office hour? But also do you know about Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hamilton and, , do you understand what people are talking about when they talk about the South of France?

[00:31:53] Melissa Osborne: . And all of these pieces, and that’s the era we’re in. And we’ve been in this era for about 15 years, , in which higher [00:32:00] education has been more and more and more building programming and resources for students to provide them with that capital that they need in order to succeed. But also. Part of why they’re not succeeding is because they do not have what they need to become socially mobile.

[00:32:16] Melissa Osborne: . And so it’s this idea that it’s like, oh, it’s not just about being able to do well in your, you know, calculus course, right? But that is part of cultural capital. And so having tutoring available for folks is part of it, but it’s also about being able to connect with and fit in and feel like you belong with your classmates.

[00:32:33] Melissa Osborne: That maybe their parents are the CEO of Coca-Cola, you know? . And being able to have the same cultural touch points as them and talk to them, but also talk to your alumni, , who are the ones that are going to give you jobs, , and start to become and look and behave and talk like an alum from those kinds of organizations do.

[00:32:53] Melissa Osborne: , and so. This kind of polishing process is this machine now, at colleges and universities across [00:33:00] the nation. The book focuses on selective schools, but I did a follow-up study, , at a regional, state college in the Pacific Northwest. Um,

[00:33:09] Melissa Osborne: and I. Hmm. , and it turns out the same process happens at schools like that as well.

[00:33:14] Melissa Osborne: It’s just not to the same extreme. . , it’s about the relative mobility that is being asked of a student. . And so, not all. Students at these state schools are gonna go through this, especially if they’re, maybe they’re first gen, but their dad’s a carpenter and their mom is a teacher’s aide and they, you know, live a pretty like middle class life. , but for the lowest income first gen students, even at kind of regional state colleges and universities, they feel the same kind of polishing process.

[00:33:40] Jonathan DeYoe: So, I wonder, I, I know that , you’re talking specifically to, first gen, you’re talking specifically to, elite schools, elite universities. But as you’re talking,, I might, reflecting my own experience, and I, I didn’t go to an elite school. I’m not a first gen student.

[00:33:55] Jonathan DeYoe: But I, I remember coming back after my freshman year and telling my [00:34:00] parents how, , I studied comparative religion and I studied philosophy and I, I’m not a, I came back and I’m not a Christian anymore. I remember changing, I was raised pretty poor and now I am not, and it’s not, that didn’t happen in college, but, kind of resonating a little bit with me, even though.

[00:34:16] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m probably the poster boy for the man. Like, like, so, so, you know, 53 white, tall male. Like I, I am like every advantage, but there’s still a sense of, the mobility was what I wanted.

[00:34:33] Melissa Osborne: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:34] Jonathan DeYoe: , and I really wanted it, like when I was nine, I knew that that’s what I was gonna do. I was going to be mobile, I was going to have a million dollars, I was going to be right.

[00:34:44] Jonathan DeYoe: , and I was certain of that. Don’t think I was polished. You know, I don’t feel polished. I went to a state school, only that kinda stuff, but I still feel that there was a distance created between myself and my family growing up. Like I think [00:35:00] that there’s, so how much of that is just supposed to happen?

[00:35:04] Melissa Osborne: Hmm. That’s a great question. The book has been out for almost a year, and the number of folks that I’ve talked to that uh, have expressed essentially having similar right, that they resonate with the book, even though, like you said, they come from very different.

[00:35:20] Melissa Osborne: You know, backgrounds or intersections of identity Right. , is quite a bit. . The book focuses on a very specific set of folks, in a very specific set of contexts. But it does speak to a set of much larger processes, . Of like what social mobility is and what social mobility does.

[00:35:37] Melissa Osborne: Right. And I think that, one of the things that, is a strength of this study is that, and, and we do this all the time in social science on purpose, right? Is that you pick extreme examples to try and highlight like more generalizable kind of, , processes. . And, the soapbox that I get on in the book and that, you know, going into the project, I didn’t know how to [00:36:00] articulate it, but I just was really like. Social mobility does something to people, right? This is a thing that happens to people all of the time. To varying different degrees, but it does something to us, right? And we don’t talk about it that way. And, you know, I was able to produce enough data and kind of weave together these students’ stories to be like, here’s one very extreme set of examples of this, but this is part of a larger, bigger thing that is what social mobility is.

[00:36:31] Melissa Osborne: And social mobility involves an economic, a social, and a cultural component, right? . Each of those components work together in a way that their demands on each level, , of what they expect of a person, of each kind of class status, right?

[00:36:43] Melissa Osborne: As you like, move your way up, or down right for downward mobility . it’s going to change people. Right? That is because , , you start at one, even if it’s just economic, right? We have all kinds of, popular culture examples of how you can’t just buy your way [00:37:00] into social mobility, right?

[00:37:01] Melissa Osborne: know, I grew up watching reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies as a kid, which is like, oh, that doesn’t. You know, doesn’t do well now, but like the idea is there because we still have that in contemporary, , media as well. . That it’s this idea that, you know. , you can’t just buy your way into social mobility, right?

[00:37:19] Melissa Osborne: Like sure you can get there in the space. Physically. You could buy a house that’s very fancy , and be in a nice neighborhood, but you will be an outcast and no one is going to want to be your friend. , and you will never be part of the group, right? Because we have these social expectations and cultural.

[00:37:35] Melissa Osborne: Expectations. And so yeah, I think that this is what’s supposed to happen to people when they go through social mobility. I think the question that I try to ask is like. A, is that fair? , but that’s like, a philosophical question. But the more important question, right, is like, okay then if this is what is expected and necessary and perhaps just part of what social mobility is, what do we do to better support [00:38:00] folks and particularly students while they’re on that pathway? Because there’s nowhere in the world in which I would argue that I don’t think students should be going through social mobility, right? Like I myself went through it and although there are some very weird parts to it and hard parts to it, right? , I get to be a professor now and I don’t have to work in a factory, and that alone

[00:38:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Beautiful. It’s a beautiful.

[00:38:22] Melissa Osborne: it’s great. It’s amazing. , but I always, I joke with some of my friends I went to grad school with that were, , also first gen. You know, it’s like I can buy fancy juice now. , and I just, I, I’m a pretty simple person, but I love fancy juice. , um, Yeah. And so really it’s about how do we support folks what can we do from, the university institutional perspective or also right from scholarship organizations? , what can be done to be a little bit more, I. Not necessarily transparent, but a little bit more kind of open about this process, , for students and their families as they’re headed into it.

[00:38:56] Melissa Osborne: Right? Not a doom and gloom, oh no, this is gonna mess you up or change [00:39:00] you in all these scary ways, but you know, this is going to change you. And like, here’s what to start to expect. , here’s how you can , get support from us. ’cause I think that that’s right, like producing social mobility.

[00:39:10] Melissa Osborne: Pathways for folks , is a deeply important thing. But just like other folks have argued, you can’t just let people into college without supporting them, , once they get there. . You can’t just open the pathway towards social mobility without supporting people once they’re on it.

[00:39:25] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, so it’s really critical to have the three elements, you know, the financial, the social and the cultural. And to educate people about those three things as they’re going in this, you can expect this like, hello, it’s gonna be hard and you’re gonna. Change.

[00:39:38] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, and I think that, you know, it’s having gone to these kinds of schools, , and being on a Mindful Money podcast, they focused far too heavily on the social and cultural and like , I had money in order to pay my bills, but I think that that was a piece of it that, you know, , I’m very fortunate.

[00:39:55] Melissa Osborne: My wife and I bought a house a few years ago, but I was like, I have no idea how to [00:40:00] do this. Nobody in my family can talk to me about this. I don’t know what I’m doing. And to the point that I even looked to see if there was a workshop in my, like, alumni office for my college about it. And there wasn’t, , ’cause it was like, that’s so the internet, , was who helped me.

[00:40:16] Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, that, that’s, that is the purpose of mindful money , is to provide that kind of space. So, so that’s, we, we’ll talk about that later. , so let’s pretend for a second. You’re talking to a family. They’ve got a first gen college student, , and you are telling them , that they need to prepare for the polishing experience.

[00:40:31] Jonathan DeYoe: What’s one thing that they can do to prepare for the polishing experience

[00:40:36] Melissa Osborne: I think that the one thing that they can prepare that they should or could prepare for the polishing experience is to have open communication. . I think that one of the things that I found is that because, , . Students are often the only one from their community going through this. Parents are often the only one from their community going through this. They don’t necessarily, feel. The, that they have the [00:41:00] right or comfort to talk to folks, , on campus about what they’re going through. And so there’s a lot of silence that goes on, . , I spend a lot of time thinking about, what are kind of low cost interventions for schools that don’t have a ton of resources.

[00:41:12] Melissa Osborne: And I think that. Producing lines of communication with students , and their families, but also helping students learn how to communicate with their families and vice versa, , can go a really long way, , towards this. Right? , , because I think that trying to navigate it alone is way too difficult.

[00:41:32] Melissa Osborne: But also, right. I think that from the kind of hitting on the other pieces of what’s going on here is this kind of adolescence , and movement and all of that, . , kind of. As a latent function, , ends up, you know, kind of helping on that end as well, , you know, between students and parents.

[00:41:48] Melissa Osborne: Now that doesn’t mean you have to tell your parents everything that’s going on with you, you know, , is what I would say to the college kid, right? Like, I think communicating, , is the first piece of it and like being flexible, [00:42:00] right?

[00:42:00] Melissa Osborne: Because that’s what it’s gonna demand of you is to be

[00:42:02] Melissa Osborne: flexible. Um, right? That, that this is gonna demand flexibility, , in a lot of ways that are uncomfortable.

[00:42:09] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. The thing to do is communication, flexibility. what’s one thing that they should be careful maybe to avoid doing? I.

[00:42:15] Melissa Osborne: The thing that they should be careful to avoid doing. I think it is like, , making Snap decisions, , in reaction to, to what you’re experiencing, right. , I think a lot of students and then myself included in these moments of kind of like, oh no, who am I now, what have I done? Folks will try to overcorrect

[00:42:37] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:42:39] Melissa Osborne: And so that can lead to very funny things like, you know, when I was in graduate school, I kind of one day was like, oh, who is this J crew person? , what am I doing? What’s going on? And I was, , a graduate ta and I showed up to class in a pair of, I. Like ripped jeans, shorts, and a Led Zeppelin tie-dyed T-shirt at the University of Chicago.

[00:42:57] Melissa Osborne: Right. Because I was like, no, I’m gonna hold [00:43:00] onto my working class identity, which was like a totally wild situation. Right. And I think that for the students as well, they, in the book, you know, kind of more, more meaningfully as opposed to my kind of more flashy moment. . Would be like, I’m just gonna. Cut ties from people all of a sudden, right. I’m gonna stop talking to people. I’m gonna stop attending certain, like classes or stop, you know, being part of student groups or things like that, right? Or stop talking to my siblings, , because of these kind of overcorrections in different directions, right?

[00:43:33] Melissa Osborne: And you know, and part of that is because of not having anybody to talk to, right? Folks are like, the only thing I can do is like, I can control this one piece, which is what, who I talk to or what I do. , because there’s also schools, although they give a ton of, , give a ton of capital to students.

[00:43:47] Melissa Osborne: They don’t have any programming for how to manage that. , and so, yeah, I think that it’s like, think everything through. Don’t make any snap decisions.

[00:43:54] Jonathan DeYoe: Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

[00:43:56] Melissa Osborne: Take the deep breaths.

[00:43:57] Jonathan DeYoe: Just before we wrap up, I, I always like to come back to a [00:44:00] personal question and that’s, and it’s always the same question. people hear it as a zinger, , it’s not intended as a zinger, what was the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:44:08] Melissa Osborne: Ooh, what was the last thing I changed my mind about? Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, I guess like, technically the last thing I changed my mind about was what I was gonna eat for lunch today. Yeah,

[00:44:20] Melissa Osborne: I know. It’s, it’s so interesting. I wanted to go big. I was like, what is a big thing I changed my mind about?

[00:44:25] Melissa Osborne: It’s like, eh, actually the last thing I changed my mind about is whether I was gonna bring my leftovers with me on eat them before the podcast, and I did.

[00:44:32] Jonathan DeYoe: You did. You did good. Good. Yeah, that’s good. I like eating the leftovers. So how can people connect with you? Where do they find you and where do they find.

[00:44:40] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, so the book is available. , , pretty much anywhere, , your favorite local bookstore, the University of Chicago Press, or whatever online retailer you’re a fan of. I Am on Blue Sky. I’m m Osborne Soc, and, , you can also find me on LinkedIn, , under my name. And, , yeah, I’m pretty Googleable, , unfortunately, I [00:45:00] guess.

[00:45:00] Melissa Osborne: Um. If you wanna read some really, embarrassing interviews back from when I was an undergrad getting scholarships. It’s all out there on Google.

[00:45:08] Jonathan DeYoe: Ooh, I’m gonna go do that now.

[00:45:13] Jonathan DeYoe: Ah, thank you so much for being on the Mindful Money Podcast. I really appreciate it. I, I love the con, I don’t love the concept. I, I love the description of the concept and the work you’re doing. I think it’s important stuff.

[00:45:23] Melissa Osborne: Yeah, this was

[00:45:23] Melissa Osborne: amazing. I really appreciate it.

[00:45:25] Jonathan DeYoe: thanks.

[00:45:26] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future [00:46:00] episodes.