Kenneth Oldfield

Social Class, Sexual Orientation, and Toward Proactive Social Equity Scholarship

An analysis of data from the premier public administration journals in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States shows academic public administration has taken both a narrow and a conservative approach to four social equity issues, including gender, race, sexual orientation, and social class. The findings show these periodicals (a) seldom and sometimes never publish articles on the four themes; (b) confine nearly all their social equity writings to race and gender; sexual orientation and social class receive little or no attention; and (c) only publish such papers long after the matter has become fashionable in most other social circles. The article concludes by suggesting ways American public administration can develop a more intellectually diverse, proactive professoriat, thereby allowing for publishing more—and more timely—articles about emerging social equity topics.

Humble and hopeful: Welcoming first‐generation poor and working‐class students to college

Students who are the first in their family to enter higher education join a rarified and often mystifying culture of rules, rites, and rituals. n nA first-generation working-class college student who became a faculty member offers his insights and recommendations after forty years in the academy.

Social Class and Public Administration: A Closed Question Opens

The American Society for Public Administrations (ASPA) Code of Ethics commits it to representativeness, fairness, equality, and affirmative action. Notwithstanding these goals, mainstream public administration teachings, texts, and journals mostly ignore the role of social class in understanding the how and why of bureaucratic operations. This is especially puzzling given all the studies showing that socioeconomic status affects most life outcomes and, in turn, governments response to the resulting discrepancies. This study reviews the fields neglect of class matters and shows how this oversight limits the range of possible policy options available for consideration. The discussion closes by (a) suggesting ways to address this omission and (b) explaining how the recommended reforms are consistent with ASPAs Code of Ethics.

Expanding Economic Democracy in American Higher Education: A two‐step approach to hiring more teachers from poverty‐ and working‐class backgrounds

American universities are seeking to increase ‘academic staff diversity’ by hiring more females, racial/ethnic minorities, military veterans, and persons with disabilities. Various researchers have presented evidence showing that people of poverty and working‐class origins are significantly underrepresented within the US academic staff. Nevertheless, no college or university includes social class background considerations among its diversity criteria. The first part of this study recommends informal procedures currently employed teachers can use to expand economic democracy in higher education by hiring more academics of humble origins. The second part shows how the consequences of these unofficial efforts can be directed toward making social class background a formal part of every American universitys academic staff hiring standards. The discussion also lists anticipated criticisms of this proposal and appropriate responses for each complaint. [P]reserving the status quo without tackling the accumulated disadvantages that children carry with them throughout their lives would ultimately erode a half century of progress in enhancing the capacity of our colleges and universities to serve the countrys core values. In our view, the nation can ill afford to pay such a price. (Bowen et al., p. 243) In this paper, working‐class academics includes teachers whose parents or guardians never attended college and who held jobs commonly associated with blue‐collar, pink‐collar, or poverty‐class occupations, such as short‐order cooks, domestics, labourers, waiters, waitresses and other vocations usually not requiring at least an associate or undergraduate degree for entry. To avoid monotonous repetitions, the terms ‘college’ and ‘university’ are used interchangeably, as are ‘social class background’, ‘social class origins’, ‘socioeconomic background’ and ‘socioeconomic origins’. While the title of this article includes ‘hiring’, the discussion also offers comments about recruiting and retaining working‐class academics.

Are the Nation's Leading Political Science Programs Practicing the Egalitarian Values Espoused in American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality , And if Not, How Can They?

The American Political Science Associ ation (APSA) has roughly 14,000 members. In fall 2002, APSA appointed a Task Force on Inequality and Ameri can Democracy (TFIAD). The groups 15 members represented various presti gious American universities, including, for example, Harvard, Stanford, Prince ton, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. TFIAD was tasked with assessing the relationship between economic inequality in America and changes in political participation rates in our representative democracy. The group issued its findings in 2004. Their report (TFIAD 2004), titled Ameri can Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality (ADARI), revealed that over the last 30 years a pronounced upward shift in the distribution of wealth and income in our nation has led to growing economic inequalities that have caused government officials to become much more responsive to the demands of the well-to-do at the expense of the rest of the population, especially those of low income and low education. Among its various findings, TFIAD argued, Disparities in wealth and in come have recently grown more sharply in the United States than in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and many other advanced industrial democracies (2). The report further warned of the grow ing concentration of the countrys wealth and income in the hands of the few (1). ADARIs comparison of longitudinal data on the income distribution among fami lies in the U.S., Britain, and France finds that the percent of earnings going to the highest one-tenth of 1% of households in the three countries ran parallel through much of the twentieth century. From the end of World War I through the 1960s, these three countries adopted public poli cies meant to prevent large disparities in the distribution of income among their respective citizenries. However, starting in the mid-1970s, the United States rap idly diverged from its two allies and be came far more unequal (3). By the late 1990s, the percent of income held by the very rich was two or three times higher in the United States than in Brit ain and France (3). The report explains that Americans are willing to abide high levels of income disparities as long as everyone has an equal chance to get ahead (4). Yet, ADARI notes that upward social mobility in the United States has been gradually declining. Apparently, the upward mo bility of the few has not offset the eco nomic disparities among the many. The report bemoans that today Americans are working harder just to stay in place (to maintain their current economic stand ing), let alone get ahead. Not surprisingly, the upward redistri bution of wealth has meant that more affluent Americans have an easier time financing their childrens education (11, 16). Meanwhile, it is becoming harder for poor and working class (hereafter simply working class) parents to pay their childrens college expenses. The educa tion horizons of youngsters from these homes have been further limited by other factors affecting school financing, such as reductions in the value of Pell Grants, declining support for raceand gender based affirmative action, and cuts in state budgets for higher education (16, 18). Gerald and Haycocks (2006) Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equity in the Nations Premier Public Universities further buttresses the reports argument. This study shows that flagship public universities in most states are becoming ever less accessible to students from low income families. These findings are espe cially revealing because everyone has an equal chance to get ahead (ADARI, 4) usually means that no matter what family circumstances they are born into, formal schooling presents all children the same opportunity to earn the credentials needed to gain high standing in life. For Americans, formal learning is the great leveler (Birdsall 1998). Because of the strong relationship be tween tertiary schooling and increased political participation (ADARI, 5, 8), TFIAD also considers these growing in equalities in educational opportunities a threat to our democracy. The authors de scribe the college campus as an invalu able (16) booster of interest in politics and political participation. Among other things, the report notes that higher learn ing instills skills and values that encour age voting (6) and that Less advantaged Americans vote less because they lack the skills, motivation, and networks that the better advantaged pick up through formal education and occupational advancement Kenneth Oldfield is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration at the University of Illi nois at Springfield. His most recent research, conference presentations, and publications have focused on democratizing higher edu cation through use of socioeconomic-based affirmative action to recruit and place more college students and professors of poor and working class origins. He is coeditor of the forthcoming book, Resilience: Queer Profes sors from the Working Class (SUNY-Albany Press), which will be available in November 2008.

Predictive Validity of the Graduate Record Examination with and without Range Restraints

Most studies show that scores on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) have low predictive validity for graduate grade point average. One suggested explanation is that the input and output variables have restricted ranges. Restriction of the input variables results when students with low GRE scores are omitted from the analysis. The output variable is constricted since most students receive an A or B in courses. However, the present study shows that the GRE has low predictive validity even when both the input and output variables are more widely distributed for a sample of graduate students. The need for better screening mechanisms to select from among applicants to graduate school is discussed.

Reflections on Theory in Action Using Critical Theory to Teach Public Administration Students About Social Class Inequalities

Various publications have shown that academic public administration mostly ignores questions involving socioeconomic disparities. This is especially true for how inherited cultural, social, and financial advantages affect interclass mobility, significant life outcomes, and, therefore, a citizens relationship to government. Even public administrations social equity movement generally ignores class inequalities. Critical social theorists argue that socioeconomic issues must be a central focus of public administration. This article addresses the fields disregard of class matters by proposing ten instructional tools public administration professors can use to introduce students to major concerns about the relationship between socioeconomic disparities and government operations. By encouraging students to understand classism, public administration faculty can help fulfill their disciplines self-professed commitment to fairness, justice, and equity, and being a cutting-edge enterprise.

Our Cutting Edge Isn’t Cutting It

During the past several years, various writers and commentators have argued that as part of their affirmative action efforts, universities should enroll more students of working-class origins because socioeconomic integration ensures greater social equity, democracy, and intellectual diversity. The present study shows that the justifications applied to student diversity pertain equally well to professors. This discussion proposes that if public administration were first to use socioeconomic status–based affirmative in faculty hiring, it would prove the discipline’s willingness to meet its self-imposed obligation to be cutting edge, a promise studies have shown it has yet to fulfill.

Genetics and the Future of Government Budgeting Policies: A Call for Research and Debate

Demographics help individuals understand government spending patterns. This project speculates how recent advances in the genetic sciences (GS) will affect our public spending priorities by changing, first, the nations demographic composition and second, its views toward certain basic government services. The discussion has four parts. Part 1 considers how selected GS discoveries will dramatically affect public spending choices by transforming the nations population characteristics. Parts 2 and 3 speculate how other GS findings will significantly alter spending patterns for public elementary and secondary education, and law enforcement, respectively. Part 4, the conclusion, argues that if public managers fail to appreciate the fast-approaching changes GS portends, the consequences will overwhelm us, and thereafter, we will grudgingly spend public resources solving problems that might have otherwise been prevented or minimized.

Professors, Social Class, and Affirmative Action: A Pilot Study

Abstract A popular input measure of bureaucratic success is whether the demographic characteristics of an organizations personnel reflect those of the community. Does the bureaucracy employ, for example, ethnic minorities and women in roughly the same proportion as their respective percentages of the citizenry? Given several recent court decisions and public referenda limiting the use of race and gender considerations in placements and promotions, some writers now propose that measures of diversity include socioeconomic status (SES). This study shows that the parental SES of teaching faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is far higher than the publics. Based on these findings and related literature, the present discussion offers a rationale for why UIUC, and eventually perhaps many other universities, should use social class considerations in an affirmative action plan to recruit and hire new faculty; suggestions for implementing such a class- based hiring program; and rebuttals for anticipated criticisms of this proposal.