How come? ““Many students at large public universities are the first generation to go to college. They’ve never heard of Phi Beta Kappa,’’ says Martha Ratliff, a professor of linguistics at Wayne State in Detroit, where only half of those invited joined. Some students said that money was an issue, even though many schools will pay for those who can’t afford the one-time dues of $20. And others simply don’t seem to care anymore about the Phi Beta Kappa mystique. At the University of Texas, Austin, which had a 40 percent rejection rate, senior James Ayers says: ““The only benefits I saw were rsum-padding. There are some of us for whom prestige is not the first thing on our minds.''
