The Cost of College; The SEED School; Hard Times Generation | 60 Minutes Full Episode

America built on the dream of upward Mobility has become a country of deepening divide between rich and poor the surest way to narrow the wealth Gap is to earn a college degree now major universities like Princeton are working to lower the price of admission through a new kind of affirmative action not based on race but on low income status it began with two of America's wealthiest parents Bill and Melinda Gates they spent more than a billion dollars putting low-income minority students through college before they tell you what they learned come meet some of the Gates Millennium Scholars [Music] imagine having a couple of billionaires walk into your life and make the seemingly impossible possible that's what Bill and Melinda Gates did for these students at the University of Central Florida they're among 20 000 Nationwide whose tuition and expenses were paid in full when you were notified that you received the scholarship was that a letter an email a phone call how did that come to a letter came it came as a snail mail yes I think it was priority the founder of Microsoft and you got a snail mail acceptance letter when you got that letter what did you think my mom she opened my mail and then that's when she broke the news to me that I got discouraged I'm sorry nearly 70 percent of Americans don't have a degree and Kyra Kelly was destined to be one of them she grew up in poverty and even today she wastes nothing because as a child she often had only one meal a day the free lunch at school I guess I never really dreamed of going to college I just knew I just had to do what I could do to make sure that my family and I could survive when you started the scholarship what were the big questions that you wanted to answer well one was whether a group of minority students could have very high achievement go to the toughest universities if there was no Financial constraint you assume that minority students would do as well in higher education but what you were looking for was Data hard facts you bet what's proven itself out now with the scholarship programs you remove that barrier they not only do as well as their white peers no matter what ZIP code they're from they often actually do better the gates program looked for good students but not necessarily the top of their class the results have been remarkable nearly 90 percent of the gates Scholars have earned a degree and that's life-changing because on average graduates earn a million dollars more in their lifetimes observation now it's Kyra Kelly who's doing the teaching after earning a bachelor's and master's degree in education with her Gates scholarship as College becomes more expensive and student debt Rises what's at stake for America well it's a huge problem we'll have a two-class society where the Richer families are able to support the scholarship and you'll have an inner city uh mostly minority group that's no longer going to those Elite colleges and therefore a lot of the high paying professions are out of their reach so that's really bad at an individual level it's also very bad for the the country and our our basic founding Credo of equal opportunity in our economic strength Bill Gates's warning Echoes on the quad of Princeton University we have to be a place where people can come together from lots of different backgrounds and president Christopher eisgruber is leading the nearly 300 year old school through a radical transformation you know the 20th century activist Upton Sinclair described Princeton as quote the most perfect school for snobbery in America we look back and and we see those kinds of quotations about us and we have been working to produce a very different Princeton and this commitment we have to be a real leader on socioeconomic diversity is a big part of taking the next step for us and making the right kind of difference in the world to make his point ice Gruber showed us yearbooks going back a hundred years this one's from way back in 1915 and you can see obviously we're all male and we're all white 68 years later ice grouper graduated from Princeton so we've we've run the clock forward pretty rapidly now we have women now we have women here's an African-American student but only occasionally in 1983. over the next 30 Years minority representation more than doubled to 40 percent but it wasn't enough 60 percent of its students were still from the top 10 percent income bracket so Princeton decided to start recruiting students based on socio-economic status we realized we had to train our readers in the admissions office to look for different things in these applications a kid who's working two jobs to help bring money home and achieving great grades isn't going to have the same kind of extracurriculars as a kid from an elite private school in New York but if two applicants with the same test scores the same GPA apply are you going to prefer the first generation low-income student we do think those students Supply something special on this campus so yes we're looking for that it's a new kind of affirmative action it sounds like yes it's a new way of making sure that we have the diversity on our campus to deliver on the kind of education that we care about and that the world needs last fall we met some of Princeton's chosen ones toyin Mason Kelton Jackson and Jalen are first in their family to go to college with Chris and Tyler they're considered low income at Princeton that means household income of less than sixty five thousand dollars a year be honest how many of you stepped onto the Princeton campus for the first time and thought to yourselves I may not make it almost immediately like two seconds in there was what intimidated you the school looked like Hogwarts that's true um and I had never been in an institution that looked so expensive and old uh in my life it just seemed like everyone was so much more capable and it made me feel very small but Jalen figures she's part of a new community the flies that short for first generation low income you're sitting here wearing a fly is fly t-shirt what does a shirt mean so resources available to first generation low-income students and also working to destigmatize this sort of first generation low-income low socioeconomic status Princeton helps these students succeed with summer programs and seminars on public speaking resume writing and networking we really want to develop your fluency and what's essentially relationship building right I feel like a lot of our peers knew from the jump how to navigate College their parents are like you need to do this you need to do this and a lot of us did not have that privilege that it felt like they already had a leg up and that we're struggling to catch up I was having this discussion and it's like oh well we're going to go to New York for the weekend let's all go to New York it's like I can't go to New York I got to stay here I have to do my job this is literally my job this year 28 of Princeton's freshmen are first generation or low income 16 percent of the student body receives financial aid your student body isn't infinite by accepting some of these first generation low-income students you must be turning down some highly qualified kids maybe kids who have Princeton in their family history you know Scott one of the things that is so tough about our admission situation right now is we're turning down 93 and a half percent of the kids who apply so as we've taken up our low-income students who are still underrepresented in our population we've had to make other tough choices about other students is this idea of bringing up the lower socioeconomic class into higher education a movement in this country I think it is a movement right now at least among college and university presidents I think there's a recognition that in this country right now some of the divisions that we need to heal are around economic class and we need to be paying attention to that among those paying attention are the presidents of some of the largest public universities in 2013 backed by The Gates Foundation they formed the university Innovation Alliance headed by Michael Crowe president of Arizona State University within each School what's worked and what hasn't worked I can tell you in four years Alliance schools have increased low-income student graduation by nearly 30 percent how did you do it we did it basically by innovating our culture we changed our culture from faculty centrism that is we're there for the faculty to student centrism we're there for the success of the students now that might sound uh like we should have been doing that all along but the academic culture is often built around the academic as opposed to being built around the student they've lowered tuition costs by making it easier for students to transfer from Community College and by increasing online learning so students can both work and stay in school Bill we've talked a lot about the needs of the students but what are the countries needs going forward in terms of a Workforce and education well the economy is constantly changing and automation is taking away a lot of the jobs that you could do with only a high school degree and so if you look at the current trajectory of how many kids are going to college we're going to fall over 10 million jobs short of being able to fulfill the demand also as we're competing with countries China and many others they will get ahead at their education level gets Beyond ours and so it's great for the individual but it's also important for the the strength of this country a country that if their dreams come true can expect from these low-income students a future lawyer entrepreneur president and professor what do you think the class of 1970 would think of this group diverse they wouldn't be able to believe that you were at Princeton there Princeton I hope they wouldn't think it's their prince and it's kind of like our Princeton now like that's the good thing about it is like we're so diverse and like that's the best thing about this whole change that's happening it's our Princeton and like 20 years from now it's going to be someone else's Princeton that may look a whole lot different than this and I think that's the beautiful thing about it a few miles from the White House in southeast Washington set some of the worst public schools in America the students there are mostly poor mostly black and their test scores are low only one in three finish High School of those who do go in the college just five percent graduate but right in the middle of the same area is also one of the most successful and Innovative public schools in the country started in 1998 the school is called seed it's the nation's first urban public boarding school 91 of the students finish high school and 95 percent go into college it's a charter school that's getting national attention admission is by Lottery open to any family in the district willing to take a chance girl 41. [Applause] this family was one of the few who won the lottery last spring a 35 000 per year education paid for by private and government money boy 12 only a third of the over 200 or so kids who applied hurt their number call with the child's future at stake emotions ran high 38. the grants were another family who won the chance to change their child's life when that number was called describe that feeling it was shocking I didn't think that was going to happen he said 38 I didn't hear anything but joy why does this mean so much to you it's called opportunity we've never had that before so why not grab it if you can hear you know the sky's the limit and how about you got a big smile is this good news yes seed is the brainchild of Raj vinakota and Eric Adler two former businessmen who quit their jobs 13 years ago to take an old idea and make it new there's boarding schools for Rich Kids why aren't there boarding schools for poor kids the intense academic environment the 24-hour aspect and constant access to role models why wouldn't all of those things be just as important for poor kids as it would be for Rich Kids We Believe very strongly that there is a group of kids for whom the answer is a 24-hour supportive educational environment and they're not going to have a shot if we don't give that to them it all starts here the seed campus is a Four Acre Oasis a safe Zone with 340 kids can focus on school free from distractions back at home seed's goal is to prepare these children academically and socially for college and Beyond the students enter in sixth and seventh grade eighty percent of them performing below grade level Charles Adams is the head of school we're a public school we have a lottery we get what we get it could be an honor roll student it could be a student three four grade levels behind and struggling with a number of issues at home so we get the gamut I was told you have kids who come here in the sixth grade reading at a second grade level is that child going to college why not why not I mean because they're way behind because they don't read at a proper reading level they're behind in math they're behind in science I'll take all of that they're behind in Reading I'll take all that and and they could be a pain in the neck that's my starting point and you think it's working I know it's working it's a 24-hour five day a week job which starts on Sunday night when the kids check in from their weekends at home hey Miss Leach how are you sweetie live in Single Sex dorms with strict rules no television and no Facebook the days start early 6 a.m and classes run from eight to four then their study hall extracurriculars and tutoring the day ends at 10. Anthony let's go let's lights up all right this kind of structure and support is new to many of these students okay so this is the quad what's also new is visiting College as early as Middle School these 8th graders went to see American University in Washington DC it's all part of reminding them of their end goal listen to these juniors show hands if you're if you're absolutely confident that you're a going to college and B going to graduate college he's got both arms up he's so he's so sure she embeds college and success and commitment to our minds on a daily basis it's like we build and we live and we grow into Scholars Scholars now did you have the confidence before you got here or this no what what gave you that confidence the teachers so on the board things that impressed you or a question you have or something teachers put extra emphasis on the basics unlike most schools there are two periods of English and two periods of math per day in Middle School upperclassmen are required to read 45 minutes a day in addition to their homework classes are small 10 to 15 students clearly you see that there's a lot of DNA inside of these strawberries teachers like Juwan Harris know every student personally their strengths and weaknesses the child is failing how do you help him or her we usually host tutorials after school last week I sent out an email saying five o'clock until they get it what time did they finally get it I would say my last student was in here probably until about 10 45. 10 45 but what what public school teacher in DC works till 10 45. I have no idea but I know that when I leave this building I'm walking past my principal's office who's in her office talking to another student and there's another teacher still in their office so it happens often.com that kind of dedication and personalized instruction has paid off I'm awesome 10th graders at seed score 40 percent higher in reading and 34 higher in math compared to other minority students in their area but seed isn't just about academics there's a life skills curriculum taught in the evenings the core values are respect responsibility Integrity self-discipline and compassion students learn social skills like self-discipline and etiquette anybody raise their hand and tell me why the skill of public speaking is important it help yourself confidence definitely helps your self-confidence good one how's the class going administrator Leslie Pool has been at seed from the start no one has pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps right like like everyone has a story about somebody who helped them and you're letting them hold onto your bootstraps and you're helping to pull them up I'm giving them everything I have you get the sense seed is more of a calling than a job for people like pool they don't simply have to raise a kid's test scores they have to change their values I think the average Middle School student comes in to see it and says I have to do two hours of homework really I have to tuck my shirt in all the time really I have to go to bed at nine o'clock at night I need to get eight hours sleep does it really take all of that just to be successful in school it takes all that middle schoolers Francis Blackman and Melvin Brown have learned that they're both in the seventh grade are you guys happy glad that you decided to come to see yes do you think you'll stay here till you graduate yes you're certain of that yes why are you so certain because I know this is where I want to be and this is where my future is going to start a whole new beginning of law that's what seed is for you you guys have long school days right yeah we got at four o'clock do you mind being in school that long nope no no I'm getting more education into my brain more education into your brain were you in class and you don't understand something to take time after school and during school to help try and help you and like they show compassion for you compassion for you you guys have any doubt that you're going to be successful no no and what does success look like we always want to believe in yourself you believe in yourself yes well I think success is kind of what you're like you're smart intelligent you're a nice reporter you dress nice your shoes are pretty and it is that knowing that you're going to be something in life you're gonna make it yes and then there are students like 17 year old sophomore Roger ball who may not make it he came here to escape his own neighborhood where guns and gang violence are common last year in one Turf battle Roger was shot in the link weeks later he was shot at again but at seed he says he feels safe when I come here I feel as though I can just be laid back without worrying about nobody having to attack me or say something wrong to me but it's like someone could hurt you in that world yeah someone could kill you in that world yeah at seed Roger is an athlete he's a b student teacher say he's not a troublemaker yet his loyalty to his Old Neighborhood his old friends runs deep how many close friends do you have back in the neighborhood number wise around like 10. how many of those guys are going to college I say nah a lot of people in your life feel like you're on the fence that you could go this way and be successful go to college or you could go this way and end up someplace else do you feel that at all well I always feel as though like I'm gonna graduate from college when I come to see I'm in this world West though I'm comfortable enough to focus in class do my homework every day like and I'm prepared for college but I'm just trying to escape that world like my outside world but it's something that's right there that's just like holding me up holding me back Can't Let It Go I just can't like a magnet it pulls you back just like a magnet you think Roger will graduate from here oh I do oh come on I do and he will go to college it makes you think Roger can be successful this is a kid who's been shot shot at I don't think it's in me to not think they can be successful he has some capacity building in front of him but Rose still has hope and he still has potential and so I just assume not give up on him until you know he until he makes it and he can believe for himself that's part of the success formula here getting these kids to believe in themselves as much as you believe in them we set high expectations I think we push our students until they can own that and they begin to set expectations for themselves but some don't seat loses 11 to 12 percent of their students every year the reality is you can't save everybody the reality is that we're going to work our darndest to save everybody we're not going to give up on any child we are going to work to create an environment where every single child can succeed in the end have there been and will there be some children for whom the clock just runs out on us sure it happens we'll never accept it we will always work to make that not happen needs commitment to their students has brought them attention President Obama who's looking for ways to improve inner city schools visited last year the school is a true success story a place where for four of the last five years every graduate from the seed school was admitted to college every graduate [Music] this class is on track to do the same with success like that then Dakota and Adler believe there should be a seed School in every major urban area they opened a second boarding school in Baltimore two years ago and they're planning to open a third in Cincinnati tomorrow the funding comes from a mixture of private donors who pay for startup costs including building the schools and then government money pays for most of the operating costs every school goal is the same a day like this one last June I'm once a Kent State University Connecticut College Winston-Salem State University Kent State University raise your hand if you're the first member of your family to go to college single generation families can not only produce a high school graduate but a college graduate and that changes the family forever and that's why we do what we do never has unemployment been so high for so long and as a result more than 16 million kids are living in poverty the most since 1962. it's worst where the construction industry collapsed in one of those places is Central Florida we went there eight months ago to meet families who'd become homeless for the first time in their lives so many were living day to day that school buses changed their routes to pick up all the kids living in cheap motels we called the story Hard Times generation now we've gone back to see how things have changed it turns out some families are losing their grip on the motels and discovering that the homeless shelters are full where do they go then well they keep up appearances by day and try to stay out of sight at night holding on to one another in a hidden America a place you wouldn't notice unless you ran into the people that we met in the moments Before Dawn time has carried us into Uncharted Territory the Great Recession began December 2007 almost 1 500 mornings ago if you were rushing to work this morning in Seminole County Florida it's not likely you'd notice the truck or hear the children getting ready for school in the clear bin we have dirty laundry in that one there's tools that we might need all these Bank bags are storage of this and that like shampoo and over here is food food so you're really not heating up food so much you're eating out of cans this is the home of the Metzger family Ariel 15 her brother Austin 13. their mother died when they were very young their dad Tom is a Carpenter and he's been looking for work ever since Florida's construction industry collapsed when foreclosure took their house he bought the truck on Craigslist with his last thousand dollars Tom's a little camera shy thought we ought to talk to the kids and it didn't take long to see why how long have you been living in this truck five months like Adventure that's how we see it when kids at school ask you where you live what do you tell them when they see the truck they ask me if I live in it and when I hesitate they kind of realize and they say they won't tell anybody and yeah it's not really that much of an embarrassment I mean it's only life you do what you need to do right it's life for a lot of folks the number of kids in poverty in America is pushing toward 25 percent one out of four Austin and Ariel usually get cleaned up for school at gas stations they find it's best to go to different ones every day so the managers don't get sore before the Bell they blend in with more than 1100 other homeless students in the Seminole County Schools at Castleberry school we met 15 kids who'd been living in cars with their parents permission they told us you don't get much sleep with your brothers and sisters in the back seat but that wasn't the worst part so we were really scared so so uh we'll stay up all night sometimes and watch over my mom and keep her uh safe how many of you show me your hands we're worried about your safety where you're living in the car to me it was scary because I thought something was either gonna happen to my mom or my girlfriend my grandfather and my daughter we weren't staying in a very good neighbor like where the car was parked and um someone came up and robbed my aunt for the little bit of money that we had well I worried that someone would just break in and steal my mom's purse Jade Wiley is eight years old she spent three weeks living in her car with her mom her dad two dogs and a cat did you think you were ever going to get out of the car I thought it was going to be stuck in the car how did you keep your spirits up by still praying to God that somebody let us stay in the hotel and how did you get out of the car well there's this nice lady named Beth and then she gave us a lot of money so we could stay at the hotel and now I'm staying at the hotel she said that a nice lady named Beth came and gave the family money well a nice Community came I just delivered it Beth Davalos runs programs for homeless kids in the Seminole County Schools this is the video that she shot when she found Jade's family well we deal with it every day we deal with it when we live in the car we're gonna go get you a hotel room now how do you feel about that when Davalos hears of a student on the street she uses County money and donations to get temporary shelter in a motel good job the money she had for Jade's family lasted only a month so the wileys and Jade are painting the rest of the motel in exchange for a room but this is rare of all the homeless families in Florida two-thirds are living on the street I hear about it every week every couple days if they're not living in the car right now they are avoiding it some of them don't even have cars to live in or they recently got out of it why is it happening right now the longevity of homelessness continues to rise so people are running out of resources the unemployment Runs Out their savings run out the family that lent the money does not have it anymore because they're looking at economic hardship and before you know it they find themselves living in their car because they just ran out of all options earlier this year when folks heard about the homeless students in Central Florida four million dollars in donations poured in Beth Davalos set up food banks in 41 Seminole County Schools they gathered up clothing for the kids and shelled out cash for motel rooms I really appreciate it 4 million is a lot of money but think of this of all the families Without Shelter in America one-third are in Florida at Casselberry school we sat down with the coats family instead of three meals a day we ended up doing two meals a day and then there was this one day where we didn't have any more money and that's how we ended up in the car last year the coats left Washington D.C for a new life in Florida but the jobs dried up when the savings went Victoria and D'Angelo learned how to be homeless they found out there's a checklist for living in a car you want security lighting a place where you might be welcome or at least a place busy enough to hide in Walmart Lots can be good it depends on the manager YMCAs mostly look the other way D'Angelo settled outside a hospital emergency room and we knew that through being there we could at least brush our teeth in the morning go to the bathroom if we need to in the middle of the night and I'm sitting on a cooler in between our vehicle and another vehicle just to make sure they're okay standing guard all night yep D'Angelo what does a man think about sitting on a cooler all night with his family in the car next time at that momentum I guess I feel less than a dad I can I guess I can say as a husband because I'm not able to provide for my family going into that car really did something to me I feel helpless I felt like I couldn't help my children I am willing to bet that the whole time you were in the car you didn't cry once did you not in front of these guys when it came time to put the girls in school the school must have asked you for an address that okay well you have these boxes to choose and you had one that said shelter you checked the shelter box yeah there was no box for a car no so you lied to them basically you do what you have to do there was not an option to take my girls away I wonder if some of these families are hiding from the system hiding from you yeah because as one woman put it to us today she said I was afraid that if they found out we were living in the car the state would take my children away from me yeah they're scared they're very scared and the reality is if the state found them in a car they could their children could be taken away and put someplace safe for now but when we find them we can put them someplace safe the coach tried to go someplace safe they called every shelter in the area but they were all full after 10 days in the car the only thing in the bottom of the cooler was an orange so Victoria started calling again and we called each and every one of them and then I got to the last one which was Orlando Rescue Mission and I called and the lady said we have program for your entire family you must have thought you weren't hearing right yeah how close did you come to running out of gas on the way to the rescue mission we had like maybe a quarter tank before the E so really all you had to your names at that point was a quarter of a tank and an orange that's right it wasn't long after the family made it into the shelter that D'Angelo found a job he's manhandling garbage cans and proud to have the work the hard work hard work's good for you I'm thankful to have a job with help from his employer they hope to get Jamie Jamia and Jayla in A Home of Their Own by Christmas what do you know now that you didn't know before you lived in the car I know to my mom is really really really protective protective because there is a ferocity that comes with being a parent on the street hiding the kids from cops and criminals watching options grow shorter the days longer and the nights the nights are just stubborn sitting on a cooler waiting for the Sun one threat to a family out here is idleness so the folks that we met fill the days with every free and normal thing after school the Metzger's Drive their truck to the library because they've got the computers that we can use and light and all that I wonder what education means to you too I mean everything it is everything to us I plan to be a child defense lawyer if I focus on my studies I have that opportunity the American dream is durable and there is something about growing up in a truck that makes you believe in it all the more as we tagged along with the metskers they told us they liked the truck better than a motel and they wanted to show us something they've been doing in the evenings they're acting in a community theater a free and normal thing on stage they had a chance to be somebody else but what struck us most was that they were just as happy in their roles as the metzgers [Applause] [Music] [Applause] before the truck I always saw all these homeless people and I would feel so bad for them and then as soon as we started Living in the truck ourselves I've seen even more and I just feel so bad and even though I'm homeless myself I want to do as much as I can to help them get up back up on their feet you sound very adult to me she likes to take over and you too a little bit Austin you had to grow up pretty fast yeah yeah every time I see like a a teenager or any other kid fighting with their parents or arguing with them and like not doing what they're told it really hurts me because they could be in my shoes and of course I don't want them to be in my shoes but they need to learn to appreciate what they have and who they have in their life because it may be the last day they might have it at the end of this day when the play was over and the kids were ready for bed Tom Metzger judged the lighting behind the theater and decided this was as good a spot as any in Seminole County to make a home for the night

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 122,865

Keywords: 60 minutes, cbs news, college, economy, student loan, fafsa, student loan forgiveness, student loans, student loan debt, tuition cost

Id: vYE6p0wg-Js

Length: 39min 8sec (2348 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023