Stop the School-to-Amazon Pipeline, Pt. 1

Why should my students have to deliver your packages?

This is the first of two posts on the school-to-Amazon pipeline. Subscribe to Cafeteria Duty to read the second post.

Here’s something I never thought I’d say out loud: I have come to dread running into my former students. It didn’t used to be this way. Those serendipitous encounters used to make my day - the moment of pause before I connected the vaguely familiar face to a long buried name, the good news about college, the thanks for having been so tough on them. I left proud, hopeful and, yes, vindicated. (Outside of being name dropped in a Nobel acceptance speech, these little thank yous are about as good as it gets for educators.)

But lately? The encounters leave me in despair. The initial surprise still brings elation, but in the last couple of years, when I’ve asked about college, I may as well have been asking for their homework -- there’s the same averted gaze, the same mumbling, the same half-believable story. 

I nod in understanding. It’s disappointing news. No educator, especially those working with low-income minority students, wants to hear a student didn’t make it to the ultimate finish line.

But it’s the answer to my next question -- What are you up to now, then? -- that brings a sinking feeling to my stomach. And invariably, the response has been: Amazon. Or FedEx. Or DoorDash. Or UberEats.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not so naive as to think that the obstacles to graduation these students faced in high school would magically evaporate once they stepped onto a college campus. Nor am I ignorant to the fact that many colleges don’t, won’t or can’t provide as much support to low-income students as successful public high schools do, what with our bear hug approach.

I also do not believe there is such a thing as undignified work. Menial jobs can be redemptive. Myself, I worked at a grocery store making salads in my twenties, and though I loathed it, I will also admit that it is impossible to ladle balsamic vinaigrette into thousands of tiny one ounce containers without learning a thing or two about your role in the universe.

What there is such a thing as, however, is an unfair job. And it strikes me as unfair that a disproportionate share of poor, low-income students should end up delivering food and packages. 

And so, while much of the discussion around the plight of students of color, especially the boys, has revolved around the school-to-prison pipeline, I can’t help but wonder if the bigger threat to them is the other one: the school-to-Amazon pipeline. 

Let’s define this as the path students follow who graduate high school, enter college, drop out early, and then, with few options, end up working low-wage, low-skilled jobs. Picking and sorting at an Amazon warehouse. Loading trucks for FedEx during the holiday season. Delivering burritos for Grub Hub. 

But what do I know? My argument about the “school-to-Amazon pipeline” is based on a small sample of students I’ve run into, others I’ve heard about through the alumni grapevine, and, let’s be honest, probably some shaky assumptions about who I see delivering packages in my neighborhood. 

But two big data points back up this anecdotal evidence.

First, the graduation rate for low income minority students remains, despite years of increased enrollment, at a miserable 11 percent. Just so you didn’t miss that: nine out of ten low-income minority students who enter college do not graduate from college. 

Second, demographically speaking, your average low-wage worker in a large metro area between the ages of 18-24 who a) is not in school (but has some) and b) has no degree, is more than likely a black or Hispanic male.

So, poor students are finishing high school, enrolling in college, but then dropping out (for a variety of reasons, no doubt) and then, with no other options, end up working low-wage jobs. Or not working at all. (And it looks like the pandemic has made it worse. Enrollment for this group of students is way, way down at community colleges (20%!) and four-year schools (30%!)).  

This is the school-to-Amazon pipeline. Why aren’t we talking about this more?

Again, the problem is not the job per se (though there’s plenty to say about the crummy wages, lack of health insurance and, oh yeah, the deadly risk such workers face when there just so happens to be a global pandemic); it’s the question of who ends doing those jobs.

Why should a disproportionate share of them be done by my former students? 

And what, if anything, can schools do about it? Shouldn’t we be dismantlers of inequality?

I’ll throw out some ideas in pt 2.

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