Burnt Out and Left Behind:
Lost Boys, Exhausted Girls, and the Broken Promise of College
Why working-class youth don’t finish college―and what can make the difference.
“Burned Out and Left Behind is fabulous. It describes perhaps the greatest challenge of every child: which is to obtain a satisfactory adult identity. The authors especially describe the enormous differences in this struggle for children from “middle class families” (where parents have college education) in comparison to the struggle for children from “working class families” (where parents lack college education).
As one of its great beauties, this book does not just give statistical description of differences between these two groups. Much more than that, it describes in detail the thinking and motivations of individuals as they grow-up from their late teens into the adulthood of their late twenties. The book is written with the skill of the world’s great novelists, so that readers understand, and sympathize with: what their subjects are
thinking. In turn, that allows us (the readers) to identify why some of those subjects manage their journey into adulthood so well; whereas others—even trying as best they can—are, nevertheless unsuccessful.
Burned Out and Left Behind is among the handful of the very best books that I have read over my 85-year lifetime. In addition, I hope that every American will read it, so that all of us can understand each other better (as we also may better understand our own histories).”
George Akerlof
Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001
Headlines proclaim that girls are displacing boys in college. But that’s not the whole story. Drawing on a landmark decade-long study of more than three thousand young Americans and the personal stories behind the numbers, Ilana M. Horwitz and Kaylee T. Matheny reveal that among working-class families, boys disengage early from school, disconnecting from the adults and institutions that could keep them on track. While girls persist through school longer, they are slowly worn down by the competing demands of work and family.
The result: Fewer than one in five working-class youth earn a college degree, regardless of gender.
Whether working-class kids earn a degree isn’t simply about aspirations, finances, or biology. It’s about how the adults and institutions surrounding young people either anchor the path to a degree or make the climb impossible. Burnt Out and Left Behind is about the nurses, teachers, and engineers we never got because we left young people to navigate college on their own―and what becomes possible when someone is there to guide their way.
Early Praise for Burned Out and Left Behind:
Ranita Ray
Author of Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom
Andrew Cherlin
Johns Hopkins University