UI president a living lesson

University of Idaho President Tim White says a college degree provides a steep ascent for students whose parents never attended college – an expansion of education and opportunity that outpaces the change for students of privilege.

There are at least three supporting arguments sitting in the big offices at Inland Northwest colleges: Elson Floyd, Rodolfo Arevalo and White himself.

The presidents of Washington State, Eastern Washington and the UI, respectively, were all part of the first generation in their families to attend college. Floyd grew up in segregated South Carolina; Arevalo was raised in a family of migrant workers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. White was born in Argentina, and his family fled the Peron regime in the 1950s, when he was 8, for California. When he was getting ready to graduate from high school, White applied to three colleges – a community college, state college and the University of California-Berkley.

He was accepted at all three. That’s when he first told his parents.

“They said, ‘That’s interesting, Tim. What does it cost?’ ” he said. “It was not an expectation that I would go to college. … But my parents, though they were not educated, valued education.”

White lived at home and attended community college for $5 a semester. Eventually, he earned his doctorate and moved on to a career as a professor and administrator. He said that his brother – who was a “whiz kid” as a youth – didn’t attend college and that he’s often noticed the differences in their lives as a result – differences in income, opportunity and life experiences.

White has a zeal for the subject. “Students of privilege” benefit from an education, he says, but disadvantaged students are lifted further and more powerfully by a college education.

“When somebody comes into the institution where it’s the first time (for their family), they’re starting at a lower point academically, but they’ll end up at the same point as that student of privilege. The ascent for first-generation families is much greater.

“I started at a junior college and ended up with a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkley. That’s an ascent.”