Yale University and the Machinery of Class Exploitation
I grew up in what was, during my high school years, the fourth-richest county in the United States. It was a place where people measured themselves by the size of their houses, their parents’ jobs, and, of course, where they went to college. The more elite and prestigious the institution, the better. For those in the most advanced classes, the public school system was a battleground for Ivy League admission.
I don’t remember any discussions questioning whether striving for the world’s most exclusive institutions was worthwhile, nor can I imagine one taking place amongst my peers. Such conversations were for those not expected to scale the hierarchy.
So when I got in, I felt like I had won.
At Yale, I encountered intelligent, curious, and hopeful students who, more than anything, were experts at reproducing elite success. I had imagined a Yale student humbly plugging away at a paradigm-defining physics problem out of pure passion. But, more often, they were grinding to meet the “exceeds expectations” benchmark. Passion existed, but only as an instrument.
The academic structure left little space for autonomy. Students had to read one book per seminar per week, complete hours-long problem sets, write research papers, and maintain leadership positions. Eventually, you learned to equate institutional success with personal worth. It didn’t matter what you pursued—cancer research, competitive swimming, cinematography, global aid work—Yale expected you to rise to the top. To be successful, you had to be of use to capital.
Yale stood like a castle in the center of New Haven, surrounded in nearly every direction by low-income, working-class neighborhoods, predominantly Black and Latino, shaped by generations of structural racism. Yale’s relationship with New Haven’s Black community dates back to its founding in 1701, when students brought their slaves to campus as servants. Later, university faculty, administrators, and students employed free Black residents to work in their homes. As Yale expanded, housing discrimination and economic exclusion concentrated these communities in bordering neighborhoods, conveniently positioning them to serve the institution’s needs.
Neighborhoods like Dixwell and The Hill—created in the 18th century—still exist, as does Yale’s reliance on racially stratified labor. Today, as in centuries past, the university depends on an army of low-wage labor to maintain its grounds, staff its kitchens, clean its dormitories—as well as a large contingency of able-bodied unemployed, waiting in reserve.
While Yale is the largest employer in New Haven, its jobs remain difficult to access. Those who secure them garner admiration. Wages and benefits are higher than other local options, particularly before Obamacare, when Yale’s healthcare coverage distinguished it. But this doesn’t negate the underlying contradiction: the institution extracting enormous value versus the working class shut out of actual power.
Yale’s stone Gothic buildings are enclosed behind locked iron gates and secured by a private police force known to harass locals. Though technically located in downtown New Haven, Yale has forcefully expanded itself into the broader city, leaving many working-class Black residents feeling unwelcome. As well, Yale consistently sought expansion of its boundaries, and a common complaint was “they’re buying up our land”—land belonging to workers in historically Black neighborhoods.
As students, we were warned not to wander too far, and we internalized that narrative: that New Haven was dangerous, that we were its potential victims. In my first year, there were 34 homicides in the city—33 of them due to gun violence. None occurred on Yale property. Still, the university positioned itself as the threatened party rather than acknowledging the violence as a symptom of the capitalist system it upholds, a system that intentionally leads to the exploitation, destruction, and immiseration of working-class communities.
What struck me most was the absence of resistance. Outsiders often perceived Yalies as rude elites who barely made eye contact with the workers who served them. I felt resentment at the iron gates that excluded, psychologically as well as physically, the people who lived there, at the smug jokes from classmates about the dangers of the city, at the carefully maintained division between the ruling class and the working class. Who, from either side, really wants to live like that, and why wasn’t there more outrage?
As an anthropology major, I began studying urban inequality and the structural conditions that maintain it. Over time, I heard the same justification from friends in New Haven, repeated like a spell: “Yale gives good benefits.” In a city where deindustrialization and labor outsourcing had gutted the local economy—a process engineered, in many cases, by Yale graduates—Yale was not just a university but the boss of New Haven.
Thanks to pressure from union organizing, Yale began paying more than minimum wage. With few other comparable options, many young people saw employment there as the most realistic path to survival. While I dreamed of becoming a researcher and traveling the world, my New Haven friends hoped that if they “stayed out of trouble,” maybe they could land a custodial or dining hall job. It seemed better than the trauma and danger their neighborhoods offered, and which they accepted as permanent. The capitalist system had given them two options: serve the castle or struggle outside its walls.
Meanwhile, Yale remained in the background, always applauding itself for “investing” in the community, hiring locals, admitting a symbolic New Haven public school student every few years, and so on. It paid not the minimum $7.25 per hour but $15.25–an increase it wielded like a badge of justice. Never mind that its endowment was $23.9 billion. Never mind that, thanks to its nonprofit status, it was exempt from paying property taxes to the city it dominates. What mattered was that, as people often said, “Yale gives good benefits.”
So, with just enough benefits and slightly better pay, the story repeats itself: a working-class city laboring to serve a fortress of capital. Generations are taught not to question the castle’s existence but to earn a place at its gates. Higher wages may ease the brutality of exploitation, but they cannot erase its foundations. The problem is not just that workers are underpaid—it’s that capitalism depends on their subjugation. Capitalism constructs systems that reinforce its exploitative basis, making it seem even virtuous and turning structural injustice into a fact of life. What’s needed isn’t just labor negotiations but a revolutionary shift in consciousness. Until people begin to question why the castle exists at all, why a university with billions in its coffers holds power over a city where trauma is inherited, there can be no real justice. Pushing for better working conditions is vital. But without questioning the existence of the system itself, we risk mistaking survival inside the machine for freedom from it.