This year’s historic Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize goes to Anthony Jack for his first book, The Privileged Poor. Bestowed by Harvard University Press, the prize acknowledges an exemplary first book manuscript, and is judged for its outstanding style, content, and presentation. It also highlights the author’s special contribution into illuminating a major problem in their field.
The Privileged Poor explores what it really means to be a poor student on an affluent campus: how having debt unduly influences academic performance, and creates an environment where underprivileged students experience distraction from post-secondary learning due to their socio-economic status.
With personal and professional insight, Anthony Jack’s award-winning book (he is the 48th annual recipient) unpacks how it’s not just enough to get into school. To graduate from it in one piece is the real challenge for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds—be they the “privileged poor”, (low-income students from upper-crust academies) or the “doubly disadvantaged” (students from under-resourced public schools).
Jack sheds light on all the latent—and blatant—institutionalized ways lower-income students are socially and academically excluded in institutes of higher education, but also provides practical, hopeful ways we can come together and improve the equity and equality of opportunity in the education system.
To learn more about speaker Anthony Jack, contact a sales agent at The Lavin Agency today.
