A review by bibliophage
The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students by Anthony Abraham Jack

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

"Access alone is not enough for fostering inclusion and generating mobility. What you will find in the students' stories that follow is that university policies are failing disadvantaged students in a number of ways. The experience of the Privileged Poor and the Doubly Disadvantaged differ most clearly in their disparate institutional knowledge of and familiarity with elite spaces, and these differences affect both their well-being and their strategies for navigating college. The Doubly Disadvantaged are not adequately integrated into the norms that govern student life at an elite institution—practices like connecting with professors during office hours—that the Privileged Poor learned in high school. As the stories in Chapters 1 and 2 will make clear, the Privileged Poor have the kind of cultural capital that enables them to be at ease when engaging with their peers and professors. Yet when it comes to money, the distinction between these two groups disappears." 

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The description for this book highlights that admission to an Ivy League school, or to higher education overall, is different from *acceptance* and that's the crux of what Anthony Abraham Jack is showing here in The Privileged Poor. The policies and cultures of higher education are significant barriers to many students, primarily students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. Jack specifically discusses the experiences of university students that he calls "the Privileged Poor" versus the Doubly Disadvantaged" which are briefly described in the above quote. Following Jack's discussion and analysis of the interviews he conducted, he shares some recommendations to adjust policies and actions that administration and professors can take in higher education to provide more and better opportunities for the diverse study body of their campuses. 

Jack's main point that "admittance is not inclusion" is strong, but there remains lots more work to be done in higher education—as Jack himself acknowledges. The study here was completed at an elite institution thus limiting the discussion and not fully representing the experiences of students at other institutions, so taking Jack's main argument and recommendations and delving in to this work further in other spaces is necessary.