Being Brown in Higher Education
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By Roberto Hernandez
While it is a great privilege to be a PhD student at a private research university, I can’t help but reflect on the various disadvantages and adversity I experienced as a first-generation Mexican-American from a low-income city. Based on my upbringing, I barely even attended college because of the lack of resources and opportunity available for people like me. The inaccessibility of graduate school (and higher education in general) for people from underrepresented backgrounds is an issue that is hardly ever acknowledged, let alone acted upon.
I didn’t learn about graduate school until I was already at my undergrad institution. I learned about the idea, but automatically disregarded it as a possibility because my mind immediately thought about how much it would cost to further my education. As an undergrad, I received financial assistance and without it, I would not have been able to continue. This is the case for a lot of people. As I learned more about grad school, I came to discover that some programs were fully funded. In my case, my mentors enlightened me by sharing the information that PhD programs in mathematics were fully funded so I didn’t have to worry about tuition, and that on top of that, I would be getting paid a stipend to go to school. This is definitely not something that I ever saw advertised and to someone like me, this information, along with other components, was life-changing. With a desire to chase an opportunity that interested me, I decided to apply and then was faced with high application costs, transcript fees, and more, which soon became unmanageable. Luckily, there was a program at my institution that was able to alleviate some of these costs as well as a few fee waivers, so it again became attainable and I was able to successfully apply and be accepted to numerous doctoral programs. Without such financial assistance, I would have never been able to even apply and it made me think about all the other talented students that may be missing out on something like grad school because of a lack of resources.
While to me the idea of graduate school was foreign, many of my peers who come from a privileged background seemed to know that this was their plan from a young age. Now as a graduate student who has taught several courses, I see this phenomenon in my students as well. I’ve met students who come from a similar background as me and I am glad to now be in a position to share my experience and how I’ve learned to navigate this world. They often talk to me about how their classmates all have internships, research opportunities, and jobs lined up for the summer that will help advance their careers in the future, while they’re left feeling overwhelmed and like they’re not doing enough. This is something that we were never told we needed to do, much less had the resources to prepare us for such a position. It’s no secret that those who are underprivileged are less likely to even go to college, and are therefore not even exposed to such opportunities. Anytime I speak to a student who is curious about grad school and I share with them that I get paid to be here, it’s a shock. I remember being shocked about it myself, because the main culprits for low-income people being so underrepresented in these spaces are the lack of information as well as the financial means.
Growing up, there was always this idea in the back of my mind that the sooner I can get done with school, the sooner I could get a job to help my family financially. I wasn’t thinking about furthering my career or my education, I was thinking about what is the easiest job to get that pays a decent amount. When I was given access to this secretive information, that it was maybe possible for me to further my education, I went for it.
We’re often told that to be in grad school you have to want to do research, you have to be curious about a topic, you have to satisfy all these arbitrary prerequisites. Well, it’s easy to be curious when you’re not worried about helping your parents out because they have retirement funds, or they have a house, or they themselves have PhDs, because then we’re given that freedom to be curious about our interests and want to study them at a deeper level. I am fortunate that I was told this information early on in my undergraduate career, and still had time to shift my focus to pursue a graduate degree, but this isn’t true for many others. I think we lose out on a large population simply because they don’t have access to correct information or any information at all. I always make it a point to try and share my personal experiences from a minority perspective in hopes that it will make a positive impact. If you’re someone who’s going through a similar situation to the one I did as an undergrad, I urge you reach out to a faculty mentor or check out the organizations like BEAM, Lathisms, and Mathematically Gifted and Black who are doing the good work of empowering and highlighting the academic achievements of under-served communities.
Roberto Hernandez is a Mexican-American, first-gen, 4th-year Ph.D. student working under Dr. David Zureick-Brown at Emory University. His interests lie in arithmetic and diophantine geometry and he hopes to one day be a professor at an institution where he can reach students with similar backgrounds as his, and make a positive impact on his community.