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    Universities - Engines of Inequality

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    intern980
    Higher education is often seen as an engine of opportunity and economic equalizer. However, the article argues that colleges may actually be perpetuating inequality in three key ways: 1) While the wage premium for college graduates is increasing, so too is the socioeconomic divide between those with and without degrees, with lower-income students becoming less represented over time; 2) Higher education amplifies pre-existing inequality by disproportionately benefiting wealthy students; 3) The system risks leaving behind half of students who could qualify for free or reduced-price lunch without intervention to make colleges more accessible.

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    Universities - Engines of Inequality

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    intern980
    65 views2 pages
    Higher education is often seen as an engine of opportunity and economic equalizer. However, the article argues that colleges may actually be perpetuating inequality in three key ways: 1) While the wage premium for college graduates is increasing, so too is the socioeconomic divide between those with and without degrees, with lower-income students becoming less represented over time; 2) Higher education amplifies pre-existing inequality by disproportionately benefiting wealthy students; 3) The system risks leaving behind half of students who could qualify for free or reduced-price lunch without intervention to make colleges more accessible.

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    Universities - Engines of Inequality

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    Higher education is often seen as an engine of opportunity and economic equalizer. However, the article argues that colleges may actually be perpetuating inequality in three key ways: 1) While the wage premium for college graduates is increasing, so too is the socioeconomic divide between those with and without degrees, with lower-income students becoming less represented over time; 2) Higher education amplifies pre-existing inequality by disproportionately benefiting wealthy students; 3) The system risks leaving behind half of students who could qualify for free or reduced-price lunch without intervention to make colleges more accessible.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    65 views2 pages

    Universities - Engines of Inequality

    Uploaded by

    intern980
    Higher education is often seen as an engine of opportunity and economic equalizer. However, the article argues that colleges may actually be perpetuating inequality in three key ways: 1) While the wage premium for college graduates is increasing, so too is the socioeconomic divide between those with and without degrees, with lower-income students becoming less represented over time; 2) Higher education amplifies pre-existing inequality by disproportionately benefiting wealthy students; 3) The system risks leaving behind half of students who could qualify for free or reduced-price lunch without intervention to make colleges more accessible.

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    of 2

    ADMINISTRATION

    Engine of Inequality
    By Karin Fischer JANUARY 17, 2016

    S eventy years ago, with the passage of the GI Bill, Congress opened the doors

    of America’s colleges to millions of World War II veterans. At peak enrollment, in


    1947, former servicemembers accounted for almost half of college admissions.
    By giving all veterans, rich and poor, the chance to earn a degree, the measure is
    credited with helping to fuel postwar prosperity and create a new middle class. And it
    cemented colleges’ role as engines of opportunity, as economic equalizers. Just this
    fall, President Obama called higher education the "secret sauce" of Americans’
    economic success.

    Is that reputation deserved?

    Does Higher Education Perpetuate Inequality?

    Colleges are seen broadly as engines of opportunity, as economic equalizers. Is that reputation deserved?
    This is part of an occasional series exploring that question.

    The wage premium for college graduates — the earnings disparity between workers
    with bachelor’s degrees and those with only high-school diplomas — is great and
    getting greater. But so, too, is the socioeconomic split between the two groups. Even
    though the number of financially needy students graduating from high school and
    attending college has increased in recent decades, the share of bachelor’s degrees
    awarded to students from the lowest income quartile declined, from 12 percent in
    1970 to 10 percent in 2014. Less than a quarter of students from families with annual
    incomes of less than $10,000 earned bachelor’s degrees within six years, compared
    with nearly two-thirds of those with incomes of more than $150,000.
    So for the individual, yes, higher education offers economic opportunity. But if higher
    education is a ticket — and increasingly the ticket — to economic security in this
    country, there are real imbalances in whose tickets get punched.

    Here’s how Thomas G. Mortenson, an analyst who crunched the data, puts it. "The
    rich are getting richer because of higher education," says Mr. Mortenson, a senior
    scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, "and the
    poor are getting poorer because of it."

    Many factors that have little to do with higher education, of course, influence whether
    students go to college, where they enroll, and whether they succeed: maternal health
    care, school quality, the neighborhood they grew up in.

    But higher education "takes the inequality given to it and magnifies it," says Anthony
    P. Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown
    University. "It’s an inequality machine."

    Finding a solution is pressing, says Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.
    Half of current public-school students — those who could go on to college or get left
    behind — qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. (Subsidized lunches are available to
    children from families that earn up to $44,863 annually, for a family of four.) The
    risks of doing nothing, she says, "are too awful to contemplate."

    In the coming months, The Chronicle will examine how college itself plays a role in
    reinforcing and even widening the gap between haves and have-nots. We will look at
    the ways that happens, and why.

    How do the messages that rich kids and poor kids get about earning a degree differ?
    Why do the poorest and least-prepared students end up disproportionately at
    institutions ill-equipped to help them succeed? What are the policy choices and the
    day-to-day decisions that state legislators and federal regulators, college presidents,
    chancellors, and boards of trustees make that perpetuate economic and educational
    divides? How have we ended up with a system that perpetuates disadvantage? Can it
    be fixed?

    Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and
    other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address
    is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.

    - See more at: http://chronicle.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/article/Engine-of-


    Inequality/234952#sthash.blDF9Sou.dpuf

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