“I dropped out of college five times.”
Not because I was lazy. Not because I did not care. And not because I could not do the work. I dropped out because no one handed me a map—just a marketing brochure. Five attempts means I believed in education fiercely enough to return each time the system failed me.
Like millions of Black students, I was told college was the only path to empowerment. The degree was supposed to be the key to dignity, success, and mobility. However, no one explained the difference between education and enrollment, between credentials and social capital, between being seen and being sold to. I kept showing up, believing, borrowing, breaking down, and dropping out.
This is not a regret-filled story. It is a story of discernment—and the cost of not being taught to practice it in education. In Lower Ed, sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom describes our cultural faith in college as the “education gospel”: the belief that more schooling always solves inequality, regardless of how that schooling is organized or priced (McMillan Cottom, 2017). Under this gospel, the student who bears the psychological and financial risk is told that any degree is better than no degree and that debt is a reasonable sacrifice for opportunity. However, what happens when the degree does not lead to a stable job? What happens when the promise of mobility turns into decades of payments, collection calls, and delayed life choices? For Black students in particular, those questions are not abstract. They are present tense.
Here’s what I’ve learned: for Black students, “college” is not a single pathway but a stratified landscape where race, class, and policy shape who gets access to which institutions, at what price, and with what psychological costs. To navigate that terrain, Black students—and those who care about them—need a pedagogy of discernment: a shared practice of asking hard questions about institutions, policies, and narratives before signing away years of their lives.
To make that case, I move through three main layers. First, I trace how the U.S. higher education system developed as an unequal structure rather than a neutral marketplace. Second, I connect that history to K–12 experiences, where tracking, counseling, and bounded aspirations shape how Black students imagine and pursue college. Third, I examine the current college landscape—from public flagships to for-profit chains—with attention to how financial aid, recruitment, and mental health interact to push Black students toward particular choices and outcomes. Along the way, I weave in my own story of dropping out and returning, not as an individual confession but as a case study in how the system works on the ground.
History: How the house was built
Before you ever set foot on a college campus, the ground has already been shaped by law and policy. American higher education did not emerge as an open common for all; it developed as a racialized and classed sorting mechanism.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, elite private colleges were built and funded to serve white, often wealthy men, training them for leadership in business, politics, and the professions (Bastedo et al., 2016). Land-grant universities, created by the Morrill Acts, expanded access for white working- and middle-class students, but still largely excluded Black students through de jure and de facto segregation. Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were created not as an additive bonus but as compensatory institutions in a system that had already decided where Black people did not belong (Bastedo et al., 2016).
These patterns are not just relics of the past; they structure who enrolls where today.
Economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues show that many highly selective private colleges enroll more students from the top 1% of the income distribution than from the entire bottom 60% (Chetty et al., 2017). The Education Trust’s Segregation Forever? Reports that some wealthy private colleges admit more students from the top 1% of income earners than from the entire bottom half, even when they are near predominantly Black neighborhoods (Montague, 2021; Nichols, 2017). These patterns travel through tax codes and budget lines. Fischer (2016) notes that high-income families disproportionately benefit from tax-advantaged college savings plans and itemized deductions, while low-income students rely on loans and work. Nichols (2017) and Montague (2021) demonstrate that private colleges with the largest endowments often spend the least on need-based aid for low-income students, instead using their resources to compete for already advantaged applicants.
In other words, the “choice” of where to enroll is not made on a blank slate. It is shaped by who can buy into particular neighborhoods, benefit from earlier policy decisions, and attend the K–12 schools that feed into specific colleges. And this is specifically about race, not just class: research shows that Black students from families earning $100,000+ attend less selective colleges than white students from families earning under $40,000, facing different campus climates, experiencing stereotype threat in classrooms, and navigating microaggressions that white students—even poor white students—don’t encounter (Harper, 2012; Steele, 2010).
Twentieth-century policies reinforced this pattern. The GI Bill, for example, is often praised as a catalyst for widespread college access. In reality, discriminatory enforcement directed Black veterans towards overcrowded HBCUs or away from college entirely. Meanwhile, white veterans attended four-year public and private colleges that generated wealth and prestige through subsidized tuition (Bastedo et al., 2016). Housing policy and school funding completed the process. When local property taxes fund K–12 education, neighborhoods where Black families were legally and financially barred from living become the ones feeding into the most well-resourced colleges.
Richard Rothstein’s work on redlining demonstrates how federal and local policies literally drew lines around Black neighborhoods, labeling them as “hazardous” for investment, while designating white suburbs as “desirable” (Rothstein, 2017). These maps did not just determine who could obtain a mortgage; they also shaped school attendance zones and contributed to patterns where schools in redlined areas had fewer gifted programs, fewer Advanced Placement courses, and counselors with larger caseloads and fewer networks to selective colleges. If your family lived within a red line, your local schools were more likely to be overcrowded, underfunded, and viewed as pipelines to low-wage work or the criminal legal system rather than to flagship universities. This is not an accident. It is structural racism made visible. The structures also appear in quieter policy decisions.
The report from The Century Foundation, Engine of Inequality, explains how state disinvestment and rising tuition have turned public colleges, initially seen as pathways to mobility, into sources of inequality in access and graduation rates (Fischer, 2016). As state funding decreases, selective flagship schools raise their tuition and attract out-of-state and international students who can pay higher fees. Meanwhile, regional public universities and community colleges, which serve a larger share of low-income and Black students, are left competing for fewer dollars and often struggle to provide adequate support services. The result is a system where the schools that enroll the most marginalized students have the least resources to support them.
Taken together, these patterns show that higher education is not a neutral set of opportunities. It is more like a house built on uneven ground. Some students enter through a front door with a welcome mat, legacy connections, and generous aid; others climb in through a side window, juggling work, debt, and family responsibilities. To understand what Black students face now, we have to see how that house was constructed.
K–12 hallways, tracking, and bounded aspirations
The K–12 hallways you walk through right now are part of this story. Sociologists like O’Connor (1999), Hubbard (2008), Muller et al. (2010), Irvin et al. (2016), and Means et al. (2016) document how school tracking, counseling practices, and informal expectations influence which students see college—especially selective or debt-light options—as possible for them.
Imagine Jordan, a composite student drawn from patterns documented by Perna, Hubbard, and Irvin in their research—a Black tenth-grader at a large urban high school. In eighth grade, Jordan’s test scores were just below the cutoff for the “honors” math track. A teacher who barely knew Jordan checked the “standard” box on a placement form, telling the family, “We want to make sure you do not get overwhelmed.” By sophomore year, Jordan was earning As in that class. However, because honors in ninth grade was the prerequisite for AP math, Jordan was not even eligible for the AP section that opens doors to STEM majors and competitive scholarships.
When it is time to choose courses, the counselor’s office is crowded. Jordan waits forty minutes, but only gets ten minutes with the counselor. With a caseload that can exceed 400 students in under-resourced schools, the counselor quickly checks the screen, sees “standard math,” and directs Jordan toward a trade certificate path that seems safe and practical. Meanwhile, a different student—white, from the magnet program down the hall—spends twenty-five minutes and receives a detailed plan for dual credit courses, SAT prep, and which flagship state schools might be a good fit.
Research indicates this is a familiar story. Perna et al. (2008) discovered that high school counseling resources and practices are divided by race and class. Students in wealthier, predominantly white schools receive more personalized guidance, more contact with parents and counselors, and greater transparency about financial aid. Conversely, students in high-poverty schools often hear generic “college for all” messages without specific details about applications, deadlines, or differences between institutions. Hubbard (2008) demonstrates that for low-income Black students in urban settings, college aspirations are shaped not only by what students want but also by what adults in their schools signal is realistic. Teachers and counselors sometimes steer Black students toward less selective or lower-cost options, framing those recommendations as protective rather than limiting, even when students have the academic ability to pursue a broader range of schools.
Irvin et al. (2016) show that in rural communities, similar dynamics play out through geography and isolation. Black and Native students in rural schools often express interest in college but confront a lack of nearby campuses, fewer advanced courses, and limited guidance about out-of-state or residential options. Means et al. (2016) add that first-generation students of color face a “hidden curriculum” of unspoken expectations about applications, essays, and extracurriculars—information that more privileged students often absorb informally from family and community networks.
When you combine qualitative and quantitative work, a picture emerges. The issue is not that Black students lack ambition. Freeman (1997) found that African American high school students could clearly name college as a goal and identify barriers like cost and racism. The issue is that the guidance, information, and coursework needed to act on those ambitions are unevenly distributed. Some students walk a hallway lined with AP posters, college pennants, and teachers ready to write recommendations; others walk a hallway lined with metal detectors, substitute teachers, and testing schedules. Both hallways are “school,” but are rarely the same place.
How the college system sorts: tiers, prices, and risk transfer
Now layer the college story on top of that.
When you examine the college landscape, you are not looking at a single system that treats all students equally. Instead, you see a stratified system where different sectors serve distinct roles. On one end are community colleges and regional public institutions that serve many low-income and first-generation students. On the other end are highly selective private universities and flagship schools that, in some cases, enroll more students from the top 1% than from the bottom 60% (Chetty et al., 2017; Nichols, 2017). In between are for-profit colleges, underfunded HBCUs, religious institutions, online programs, and more. Pricing and finance policies have been central in shaping who can attend which colleges.
Here’s what you need to understand about pricing: Michael Bastedo and his colleagues show how state disinvestment, institutional pricing, and federal aid combine to determine the “net price” you actually face after grants—a price that can be much higher than headline tuition for low-income and minoritized students (Bastedo et al., 2016). In 2020–2021, the average posted in-state tuition at public baccalaureate institutions was about \$10,560, but once fees, books, housing, transportation, and food are included, the real cost of attendance rises substantially. For Black students, who are less likely to have family wealth to buffer these expenses and more likely to rely on loans, those non-tuition costs contribute to higher borrowing and more fragile repayment outcomes (Bastedo et al., 2016; Fischer, 2016).
Lower Ed—McMillan Cottom’s term for the for-profit sector and other predatory education models—makes these dynamics even clearer (McMillan Cottom, 2017). If you’ve seen ads for for-profit colleges, you know they advertise flexibility, speed, and job placement. What they don’t advertise: high tuition for low-value credentials. They target students with “negative credit histories, high debt-to-income ratios, and low savings—people who could not easily obtain credit elsewhere” (McMillan Cottom, 2017, p. 31). In other words, Lower Ed does not prey on people who “do not care about school”; it recruits people who care deeply about education as a path to survival but who have few other options.
McMillan Cottom (2017) argues that these institutions rely on two forms of risk transfer. First, they transfer economic risk from employers and the state onto individual students. Instead of funding stable jobs or robust public colleges, policymakers encourage individuals to take on debt in the hope that a credential will pay off. Second, they transfer reputational risk from institutions to students. When graduates struggle to find work or default on their loans, the public narrative often blames their choices rather than asking why such programs were allowed to operate in the first place.
To be clear: students who attended for-profit colleges made the best decisions they could with the information and options available to them. This critique targets institutional practices and the policymakers who allowed predatory models to flourish—not the students who sought education as a path to survival.
At the same time, public and non-profit colleges have adopted some of the same recruitment and pricing strategies. High-pressure marketing, merit aid that rewards already advantaged students, and “front-loading” of grants that shrink in later years all contribute to a landscape where Black students and other marginalized groups shoulder disproportionate financial risk (Bastedo et al., 2016; Fischer, 2016).
I lived this structure in real time.
I first enrolled at a small private college that framed itself as a place where “students from all backgrounds can thrive.” The brochure showed diverse faces, green lawns, and smiling graduates. It did not show the bill. After my first year, my income shifted slightly, and my aid package changed dramatically. Grants were replaced with loans. A balance appeared on my account that I could not pay. The institution treated it as a small matter—a few thousand dollars, to be settled before registration. For me, that amount was immense. Rent was due. Bills were already late.
No one explained that I could appeal, that there might be emergency aid, or that I could take a leave of absence with a plan to return. The message was simple: pay or do not come back. The deadline came and went. I stopped out.
Over the next decade, I repeated some version of that pattern multiple times at different colleges. Each time, the combination of tuition, fees, transportation, and life costs eventually outpaced what I had. Sometimes the trigger was small: a parking ticket, a medical bill, a month with fewer work hours. At one point, I received an email stating that my account was on hold for \$900 in unpaid fees. To the institution, that amount might have seemed like a minor balance in a budget of millions. To me, it represented the gap between staying housed and sleeping in my car.
Legal scholar Chrystin Ondersma’s work on household debt helps explain why: U.S. debt policy, she argues, rests on myths that blame individual borrowers and treat credit as a route to prosperity, while ignoring how small, survival-driven balances can compound into unpayable obligations (Ondersma, 2013, 2024). From that vantage point, what looks like “a small balance” from the institution’s perspective can be the fault line in a student’s life.
In my later attempts, the costs were not just financial but also mental. I was juggling depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia, trying to navigate campus while my brain yelled that leaving the house was unsafe. Readings piled up when I could not get out of bed. Every missed assignment felt like proof that I did not belong in school and that I was “too broken” to finish what others handled with ease.
What I didn’t yet have language for was racial battle fatigue—the cumulative psychological and physiological strain that William A. Smith and his colleagues describe as produced by constant stereotyping, hypersurveillance, and racial microaggressions in classrooms, residence halls, and campus public spaces (Smith et al., 2007). My depression and anxiety weren’t pre-existing conditions I brought to college. They were responses to navigating institutions that treated my presence as suspicious, my struggles as predictable, and my ambitions as unrealistic.
The costs extend beyond finances. When Lumina Foundation and Gallup asked currently enrolled college students whether they had considered taking a break from their studies in the previous six months, and 45 percent of Black students said yes (Lumina Foundation & Gallup, 2023). Most of those students pointed to emotional stress, mental health struggles, and the difficulty of balancing school with work and caregiving as primary reasons for stopping out (Lehrer-Small, 2023). The Black Learners report notes that Black students are more likely than their peers to shoulder major work and family responsibilities while in school- working long hours, supporting relatives, and caring for children—often on top of full-time enrollment (Lumina Foundation & Gallup, 2023). That data mirrors my experience: I was working full-time, trying to be present for Chloe, and carrying the weight of generational expectations, all while quietly failing.
From within, those feelings felt like shame. Not just stress or worry, but an almost physical sensation that I was the problem. That every dropped class and unpaid bill reflected something about my character. I did not yet have words for risk transfer or predatory inclusion. I know I was told, “You should have known better.”
Assata Shakur, revolutionary, former Black Panther, and author of the autobiography Assata, describes a similar tension in the context of the credential game. At one point, she falsified her résumé, claimed to be a college graduate, and was quickly hired as a marketing assistant. Later, she took a bookkeeping job, teaching herself the basics from “bookkeeping made easy” manuals while pretending she had taught them in a previous position (Shakur, 1987). A background check came back clean because employers assumed the paperwork was accurate. She laughed all the way home because it exposed how much faith employers placed in the appearance of a degree, even when they knew nothing about the person behind it.
Legal scholar Chrystin Ondersma argues that our debt system rests on myths: that credit creates equal opportunity, that borrowers who struggle are irresponsible, and that the market fairly allocates education (Ondersma, 2013, 2024). When Black graduates carry more debt, earn less, and default at higher rates, those myths protect the system from scrutiny. Instead of asking, “Why was this loan offered on these terms?” or “Why is the net price so high at institutions that target Black students?” the narrative asks, “Why didn’t you manage it right?”
Sonja Foss reminds us that stories like mine, like Shakur’s, do not merely describe reality; they shape what audiences consider normal or inevitable. If all you ever hear are bootstrap stories, “I worked three jobs, never slept, and now I am successful”—you might assume struggle is a required ritual rather than a design flaw. If all you hear are failure stories, “they dropped out, they gave up,” you might assume leaving a program always means you did something wrong.
Discernment asks: What is this story teaching me to accept? What changes if I read my experience as evidence about the system rather than as a verdict on myself?
Counterarguments and the limits of “just choose better.”
I know what some of you are thinking. After five dropouts, mountains of debt, and struggles with mental health, maybe the problem really was my choices. Maybe I should have just picked something cheaper, worked harder, planned better. That’s the narrative I heard every time I failed.
And whenever people discuss student debt or college outcomes, someone always mentions personal responsibility. In the lunchroom, it might sound like, “Well, nobody made them go to that school.” From policymakers, it could be, “Students need better financial literacy.” Among family members, it might be, “Just pick something cheap and stick with it.” The argument is straightforward: students should “do their research,” choose affordable options, apply for scholarships, and avoid “bad” schools. If they end up overwhelmed, the belief is that they are only responsible for it.
There is some truth in this. Discernment takes effort. Institutions have core differences. Some colleges offer better support, lower net prices, and stronger labor-market outcomes than others. It is important for students to understand these differences and to reflect on their own goals and constraints. Financial literacy, in the narrow sense of understanding interest rates and repayment terms, does matter.
However, stopping there ignores the structural context. “Just choose better” assumes that students receive clear, unbiased information about their options, that all students have a similar range of choices, and that it is reasonable to expect teenagers to independently evaluate complex financial products in a landscape where even adults and regulators have struggled to rein in predatory practices (McMillan Cottom, 2017). It ignores how recruitment, counseling, and economic necessity constrain what is possible.
Consider the K–12 examples again. If Jordan is never placed in advanced math, never encouraged to take AP courses, and rarely given time with a counselor, the menu of colleges that feel plausible shrinks long before senior year. If Jordan’s family has never gone through the application process, the student may not know the difference between a regional campus with strong support programs and a for-profit chain with low graduation rates.
At the college level, “choice” is constrained by time and money. Students who need to work long hours to support themselves or their families cannot easily relocate to distant campuses with better outcomes. Application fees, test fees, and the cost of visiting campuses create barriers before any financial aid is awarded. Once enrolled, institutional practices such as back-billing for fees, withholding transcripts for small balances, and cutting aid mid-degree can suddenly transform a viable plan into a crisis (Bastedo et al., 2016; Fischer, 2016; Ondersma, 2013, 2024).
Moreover, “just choose better” often fails to account for the mental-health dimension. Lumina Foundation and Gallup’s survey show that Black students are more likely than their peers to consider dropping out due to emotional stress and the difficulty of balancing school with work and caregiving (Lumina Foundation & Gallup, 2023). Camera (2023) and The Education Trust (2022) note that Black students are also more likely to attend under-resourced institutions, carry higher debt burdens, and experience campus climates where they face racism, microaggressions, and a lack of culturally competent support.
In other words, if the structural conditions that create precariousness remain unchanged, teaching discernment alone is not enough. We have to change the conditions under which students are being asked to discern.
Toward a pedagogy of discernment
If the problem were only “students making bad choices,” the solution would be just another financial literacy workshop and a few more trees sacrificed for brochures. However, if the real issue is that students are being asked to navigate a rigged game, then discernment must be something more profound: a shared practice of understanding systems, not just slogans. What would it look like for your school, your family, or your community organization to teach discernment early—before you sign anything? One starting point is to approach college and career planning as a shared inquiry rather than a private conversation between you and a counselor. Instead of a single “college night” where representatives from various schools deliver polished presentations, think of a class period where you and your classmates analyze the data behind those presentations.
You might, for instance, select two institutions that recruit heavily at your school—perhaps a nearby state university and a for-profit chain with an eye-catching ad campaign—and research them together using tools like College Scorecard or IPEDS. In small groups, you could ask: What are their overall graduation rates, and what are their rates for Black students specifically? What is the typical debt at graduation? What percentage of students can make progress on their loans three years after leaving school? Which students (by race, income, and first-generation status) enroll there? What kinds of support services does each institution offer for childcare, transportation, food, and mental health?
After compiling the answers, you could present your findings to each other and invite representatives from those institutions to respond. This shifts the default script. Instead of students performing for colleges—trying to prove they are worthy of admission—colleges have to answer for their outcomes and conditions.
Does this work? Evidence suggests it does. College counseling interventions that help students analyze institutional data—rather than just filling out applications—improve enrollment at better-fit institutions and reduce summer melt (when students get accepted but don’t show up). TRIO programs, which provide intensive advising and structural analysis to first-generation students, show significantly higher college completion rates. Students don’t just need more information; they need tools to interrogate that information critically.
Another aspect of a pedagogy of discernment is storytelling. However, not just individual testimony about “I made it” or “I messed up.” Instead, guided reflection that links personal experiences to structural patterns. In a classroom or community workshop, you might map your own educational pathway and identify points where institutional decisions—not just personal choices—shaped your options. When did a policy, a budget cut, or a counselor’s caseload affect what was available to you? How many other people share that pattern?
Educators and mentors can support discernment by being honest about trade-offs. Instead of repeating “college is worth it” as a universal truth, they can say, “This program tends to work well for students with X conditions and supports. This other option carries a higher risk because of its costs and outcomes. Here is what we know; let us decide together what makes sense for you.”
At a policy level, a pedagogy of discernment asks lawmakers and institutions to take responsibility for the risks they shift onto students. That means funding public colleges at levels that make low-debt or debt-free options genuinely accessible, regulating predatory recruitment and lending, and ending practices like transcript holds for small balances that trap students between institutions and creditors (Bastedo et al., 2016; Fischer, 2016; McMillan Cottom, 2017; Ondersma, 2013, 2024). It also means investing in mental-health supports that recognize how racism, poverty, and caregiving shape students’ experiences.
Student organizing offers living examples of discernment in action. Knowledge alone isn’t enough—people gain power when they organize around what they know (Hayes & Kaba, 2023). Debt strikes led by the Debt Collective pushed the federal government to cancel loans for students defrauded by for-profit colleges. Campus coalitions demanded more counselors, emergency grants, and culturally competent mental health support. These actions are discernment in motion: students refusing the story that their struggles are purely individual failures, asking who else is being harmed, and organizing to change the conditions—not just navigate them better.
A pedagogy of discernment asks us to refuse accepting “college for all” as an empty slogan. Instead, we ask: Under what conditions? At whose expense? With what supports? And for whom is this particular institution actually a good fit?
For Black students in particular, discernment means asking not only, “Can I get in?” but also, “What happens once I am there? Who will be in my classrooms, my dorms, my advising appointments? How does this institution treat students like me when we struggle, when we owe money, when we protest?”
When I decided to apply to Northwestern, I had a different set of questions than I did at 18—questions I learned to ask only after years of failure. I asked about completion rates for part-time students, resources for students with disabilities, how advisors worked with students who were also parents, and what happened when students couldn’t pay a balance. I looked at the cost not only in tuition, but in time, childcare, and emotional energy.
Access to Northwestern represents a form of privilege, even if earned through survival. Most Black students will never have a selective institution as an option. For students at under-resourced regional publics, community colleges, or underfunded HBCUs, discernment means asking different questions entirely: Which professors have the smallest classes? Is there emergency aid for rent? Can I transfer credits if I have to stop out? The principle remains the same—interrogate institutions before they extract from you—but the terrain varies dramatically.
What I learned from five attempts is not that “persistence pays off” or that the system eventually works. I learned that institutions operate by rules they rarely explain, and that asking the right questions in advance can mean the difference between surviving and drowning. No one should have to fail five times to figure that out.
Ultimately, this paper has argued that Black students do not simply need more college. They need more power over the terms on which education is offered. A pedagogy of discernment —rooted in history, attentive to K–12 pathways, honest about financial and mental-health risks, and oriented toward collective action—offers one way to build that power.
You deserve more than a brochure. You deserve the truth about what different doors in this house of higher education lead to. You deserve school leaders who treat your mental health as part of your academic success, not a distraction from it. You deserve policies that make it possible to pursue education without risking your family’s survival.
Discernment will not fix everything. It will not erase red lines on a map or cancel all student debt on its own. However, it can help you see which doors lead to rooms you actually want to live in, and which are painted on a wall.
This essay centers my experience—someone who dropped out repeatedly and eventually accessed a selective institution. Other pathways exist: choosing an HBCU that nurtures rather than extracts, succeeding at community college through strong support networks, or deciding not to enroll at all after analyzing the costs. Discernment looks different depending on your options, your goals, and your community’s resources. I write from one position, knowing there are many others.
The next time you are at a college fair, ask yourself: Who built this house? Who pays the price when its foundation cracks? Who walks through its doors and leaves with more choices than they came in with—and who walks out carrying debt, shame, and unanswered questions?
Then, with your friends, your family, and your community, start sketching your own blueprints.
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