ABSTRACT
Unquestionably Urban College students exhibit characteristics which destine them to become part of a permanently trapped population of poor people - the industrial underclass. Students enter Urban College with a desire to escape ghetto poverty. Within the institution, however, they create a collective culture that ensures that the vast majority of them will remain on the streets. Unlike middle class students, students at Urban College do not enter the institution embodying a spirit of possessive individualism. Since students at Urban College exist within a broader race/class subculture that embodies oppositional elements, they must learn a new culture. "Success" rates in Urban College cannot be predicted simply on the basis of the undialectical notion of measured intelligence. It is more closely tied to the form that student culture takes within the institution, and the nature of the risk involved when individuals break with the collective.
