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Gosh...THANKS Jim. - Redrum - 01-30-2013

I'd never seen this before.  Some guy posted it on Bare Insider.  He goes into his instilling "blue-collar mentality" into his Stanford teams.  As part of that there's a little riff on the Stanford student attitude.  Rankles because he wasn't describing me or my kid who went to Stanford, or a whole raft of friends.  OTOH,  I did run into kids who had the attitude he described.  BUT, more to the point,  he is describing a whole class of kids who can be found in practically every prestigious college/university across the nation.    His message:  The poor, worked-to-death "you didn't build that" finally takes an important message out of the political context.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aenoEbKmQo

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - 97fan - 01-30-2013

Harbaugh continues to surprise. One day he's standing up for the rights of female sports reporters, and the next he's casting himself as the Elizabeth Warren of the sports world.

I would have imagined Harbaugh as a "We did build that" kind of guy. The message of rugged individualism often resonates with exceptional people, and Harbaugh has been exceptional his whole life - first as an athlete, and now as a coach.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - 82 Card - 01-30-2013

Well, he did get some things right:

1.  My imigrant parents did help with the wiring. Nothing like a few kicks in the butt and working overtime in the field for the old man to make studying look real attractive.

2.  The coach holding my hand made a difference. This consisted of older brother coming down to my bedroom and telling me that his friends at school told him that there's a school I should check out.

3.  Dickies does make some good stuff. Use it on weekends, when appropriate.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - yvonne - 01-30-2013

I'm glad you were all able to get through Stanford on money you earned yourself without the help of parents, people who built the roads, groundskeepers, people who cleaned the dorms, shopkeepers who sold you clothes, and all the people who make the food you eat and the clothes you wear.

I'm pretty grateful for the loans I received for my education. Somebody had to supply those loans, which ultimately were paid for through others' labor, whether the money was from taxes or private money lent to banks. I'm grateful for the work study jobs I had. Somebody had to work to supply the money for the grants for those projects. I'm grateful for the scholarships I received. Somebody had to labor to so that the people/foundation that supplied it to me could have the money. Oh, yeah, then there's my mother who worked at a barely above minimum wage job as a seamstress to put food on our table while I was "earning" all the above.

You guys who went to school without the help of loans, grants, and scholarships, well guess what? Even you had to somewhere along the line had to rely on laborers. Somebody had to manufacture the goods in the factories that your white collar parents made their money from. Somebody had to supply the water, clean the offices, made the air conditioning systems, build the buildings.

Even Leland Stanford couldn't have made his money if not for the steel workers who made the rails, the boiler makers who made the engines, the manufacturers who made the seats, the textile workers who made the cloth, the people who cut and shaped the wood, the people who laid the lines and put the rails together, the porters, the conductors, the engine drivers, the people who load the goods into the cars.

Nobody in even a primitive society does things individually, much less in a complex society like our own, and for every white collar worker, there are dozens, if not hundreds of blue collar people forming the foundation.


Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - 82 Card - 01-30-2013

I never claimed to have done it without help, just not the kind suggested in the video. My parents busted their butt raising me and also made a stubstantial financial contribution - not as substantial as the cost of attending UCB but a significant hit for them. I also received grants from a scholarship fund set up by a dead rich guy that founded a bank. Stanford took it in stride when I had to stiff them the last semester, certifying me for the bar and waiting 2 years for the money. (That alone is good enough reason to send them a few bucks at the end of the year for the next generation.) Of course, there were student loans. Then there were the teachers at our local public school who went out of their way to make me aim higher. The taxpayers in NJ dug deep to make the schools possible, paying for class sizes that sound like fantasy land in California.

Nope, couldn't have done a thing alone. Have no problem with kicking in for the next generation, both voluntarily and in taxes. But painting the typical Stanford student as having started on third base is pure, unadulterated BS. Sure, there were kids like that. But they were not typical and were quite easy to avoid.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - Bruce Wang - 01-30-2013

Cracks me up that any Bears would chuckle and feel smug about this video.  They are basically the same as us. Many had privilege. Many did not. The primary difference is that they didn't get in to Stanford.

Every single person I had the privilege of calling a friend at Stanford had a deep appreciation for their good fortune and appreciated all those that helped them.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - 81alum - 01-30-2013

Very nice video.  While I appreciate Harbaugh's sentiments, he may have targetted the wrong people with his work shirts.  One of the things I like about Stanford Athletics is that the average full scholarship player is most likely coming from a lower socio-economic background than the average Stanford student at large.  Harbaugh perhaps should have been asking the rest of the student body to wear work shirts to show solidarity with a working-class football team.

In 2004 two sociologists did a now-famous study of college admissions at selective universities like Stanford.  Here is what they found about the admits for the most selective tier of universities:

Students originating is the wealthiest quartile:  74%
Students originating in the upper middle quartile: 17%.
Students originating in the lower middle quartile: 6%
Students originating in the poorest quartile: 3%
(Carnevale and Rose, in America's Untapped Resource, Century Foundation, 2004.  You can download the key chapter of their book here:
http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-carnrose.pdf

I have not seen stats about socioeconomic status specific to Stanford but I imagine it is somewhat better than these numbers due to its vigorous financial aid program --but not as much better as you might expect.  I would be willing to stake money on the idea that our football players come from a much more balanced socio-economic background than the Carnevale and Rose stats or the rest of the student body.

The irony for Harbaugh is that many of our football players probably were much more "blue collar" than the rest of the student body to begin with.

Oh, and the Carnevale and Rose stats are for the most selective 146 universities, that would include C.al.  I have seen the stats for Cal, and the average family income there as of 2009 was ~$78,000.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - Farm93 - 01-30-2013

I think JH was referencing HIS football team when he mentioned that some were too cool.  I think it maybe true that some of the football players recruited for years by the AD might not really understand that they are actually quite lucky to be at Stanford.

I am reasonably confident that most Stanford students understand the odds against getting into Stanford.  7% get admitted, 93% do not.  Hard not to understand that circumstances & luck are big components of the admissions process when only 7% of applicants are successful

But those kids that got into UCB kids were generally lucky too.  Just not quite as lucky.  ;)
They still are at UCB rather than UCD, UCR, SJSU or LBSU.  The difference in many cases would be a few questions on SAT tests or a teacher that decided to set the A- level right below their final score in HS biology.  Perhaps there was a parent fluent in Mandarin, German or Japanese enabling them to boost their SAT II UC admission tally.  Luck, hard work, circumstances, whatever.

I can't help but recall the TV ad with Chris Paul and his "State Farm Agent" twin.  With just a few altered events Chris Paul could have been lucky to be an insurance agent.

FWIW - A individual using their smartphone and is that close to JH to record him for that long is unlikely to be "blue collar" and is lucky to have had that opportunity.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - oman - 01-30-2013

I got my tuition paid at Stanford by writing a little one act hit play, so I'm not sweating it either.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - 82 Card - 01-30-2013

When opinions run out, I resort to facts. Did a little googling. Things may be a little different than what I remember from way back when or maybe I was always a bit off.

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2012/02/private-university-wealth-doesnt-help.html
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/04/07_admissions.shtml
http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/undergraduates/FinancialAidFacts2011-12.pdf

The median income of entering U.CB class was 88K for 09-10. The same number for Stanford was $125K. Cut-off for top quartile was $99K. It appears that UC is doing a lot more for financial aid than it used to. Of course there rack rate is also way more, with the current rack rate at UC being more than the full budget at Stanford in my day, adjusted for changes in CPI.

Re: Gosh...THANKS Jim. - FarmBoy - 01-30-2013

Nice one, oman. Maybe I spent too much of my time starting up clubs and putting on plays. I should probably have been trying harder to score chicks.

The whole discussion is splitting hairs. In the grand scheme of things, being born almost anywhere in the US is being born on third base with a long lead. Just ask RA Dickey (http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8896558/ra-dickey-toronto-blue-jays-india-help-fight-vs-sex-trafficking). I would actually venture that the average Stanford football player did more to "earn" their position at Stanford than the average Stanford student. Even if you come from rich families, you have to bust your hump to be good enough to deserve a spot on a D1 team, even one as low as Stanford was in 2007. And on top of that to keep up good grades?

It would be interesting to see a Carnevale and Rose type study of FBS football. I would bet dollars to donuts that Stanford's team would be skewed toward higher income compared to other teams. That's what you're going to get when you put an academic filter on your recruiting profile. You're going to skew wealthier. My guess is Harbaugh was probably comparing the players at Stanford to those he knew from San Diego, Western Kentucky, and Michigan from his playing days who were on average from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. But I'd be interest to know how this "born on third base" mentality came out to Harbaugh. Would players just outright brag about how awesome they are for being so smart and talented that they earned their way to Stanford? Were they really expressing anything or was Harbaugh just inferring that because they were from more privileged background that they didn't appreciate their circumstances?

OK, now I getting more confused - Redrum - 01-30-2013

Yvonne.  I don't know to whom your comments were addressed and understanding that will keep me from trying to parse and parse again the comments on this board to which you were possibly responding.

Before we rush off applying fine-toothed income metrics to Kal students,  note that Harbaugh talked about much more than income.  He talked about advantages, the most important being:  parents who encouraged and nurtured and set expectations about higher education.  Secondary (in my opinion) are the  resources that were used to make sure those students developed and did well on all the gate-keeper tests.  I know lots of kids of my generation and certainly their kids who did prep (courses and tutors) to do well on the SAT and ACT.  Many of them went to UC Berkeley.  UCB is so competitive that they had to have that kind of support.  And a lot of kids took prep courses just to make sure they made it into San Diego State or Humboldt State.  And, although I know it's considered a joke,  I know kids who prepped to get into Bama.  Good on them! 

Harbaugh's dig , I think, was aimed at a certain kind of Stanford student and not just his team.  I think he observed well and saw kids who had excelled, who had been raised and supported to excel and saw their presence at Stanford as proof of that accomplishment.  But that attitude can be seen at every competitive,  high-ranking college or university.  At Princeton, at UC San Diego,  Swarthmore,  Furman, Rice, Berkeley, Claremont McKenna, even Reed College.  They ALL are the lucky ones who need to remember  who helped them build that,  if only to keep them from being too full of their sweet selves.

Re: OK, now I getting more confused - GoodGrief - 01-31-2013

(01-30-2013, 07:18 PM)Redrum link Wrote:Harbaugh's dig , I think, was aimed at a certain kind of Stanford student and not just his team.  I think he observed well and saw kids who had excelled, who had been raised and supported to excel and saw their presence at Stanford as proof of that accomplishment.  But that attitude can be seen at every competitive,  high-ranking college or university.  At Princeton, at UC San Diego,  Swarthmore,  Furman, Rice, Berkeley, Claremont McKenna, even Reed College.  They ALL are the lucky ones who need to remember  who helped them build that,  if only to keep them from being too full of their sweet selves.

Yeah, I agree with Redrum. I'm fine with what Harbaugh said. Harbaugh said that "some" kids, not the entire Stanford team had that entitled attitude. You can find those tools anywhere you go.