ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that public attitudes and popular images as seen in popular newspapers and fictional accounts have perpetuated stereotypes of low-income students and assert an ideal social mobility function for higher education that now shows signs of fading. It examines the public image and the collective myths about college as seen in newspapers, novels, and films in an effort to understand how the image of the low-income in American colleges has changed. The chapter ends by considering the perceptions of previous generations about the college mobility myth. Assimilation was thus what Ewen and Ewen call a Faustian bargain that many immigrants faced: "In order to truly become an American, one needed to internalize the notions of racial inequality that had, for so long, been implicit to the American heritage". It reports looking through newspaper and film archives and at college novels with an eye towards seeing how the college-going experience for low-income young adults have been portrayed over time.
