Accessibility for physically handicapped people people is an important part of the architecture of a building. imagine a university was built in such a way that most classes were not accessible to people in wheelchairs because they involved going up a flight of stairs or getting past some other obstacle. People would be up in arms demanding that being physically able not be a prerequisite for attending that university. And they’d be right.

But there’ s a different kind of handicap that’s keeping a lot of kids out of university and, like the physically handicapped, it’s not their fault. The socioeconomic status (SES) of the family you are born into has a huge impact on the rest of your life. SES is a measure of your wealth, income, education, social status all rolled up into one number. It is well-known that children born into families low on the SES scale hear 30 million less words than children of high SES families by the time they’re–wait for it–THREE YEARS OLD. That means their parents have spoken 30 million more words (not different words, just words) over a three year period. The children of high SES families then have a larger vocabulary at age three which then correlates with their vocabulary later on.

This can lead to the graph above  (these are U.S. numbers, I’m sure they’re different in Canada but we definitely still have this issue). There aren’t many graphs that I find revolting but this is one of them. Particularly the fact that high SES kids who score low in 8th grade math are just as likely to go to college as low SES kids who got high grades in 8th grade math. If that weren’t bad enough, among the kids who scored high in 8th grade math, those from high SES families were almost three times more likely to attend college than those from low SES families.

What’s going on here? If it was the lack of a ramp that was keeping these kids out of college, we’d build it. If it was a virus that was keeping them out, we’d treat them for it. Because the problem is a complex social issue people are much less inclined to push for a  solution. I’m definitely not saying that resolving this issue is as easy as building a ramp–I’m not that naive. But we should be looking at the issue helping low SES kids getting into university with the same resolve as we’d expect universities to have ramps for disabled students.