A new report on financial aid by the New America Foundation, Education Trust, and Young Invincibles (and commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) calls for “bold” federal action to ensure that college is affordable for all families.
Now, instead:
[O]ur aid system places a disproportionately large burden on families at the bottom of the income scale. Families in the lowest income quintile are asked to come up with an amount equal to 80 percent of their annual income to pay the net price (i.e., price after all grant and scholarship aid) for one year of education at a public, four-year college or university … . That’s more than five times the percentage of income high-wealth families are asked to contribute for higher education — hardly, an equitable share of the cost burden.10 The result? Rather than operating as engines of opportunity and social mobility, all too often higher education is calcifying existing inequities, shifting back toward the extreme stratification that mainly serves the elite. (emphasis added)
I understand that all of this is a complicated outcome of steeply declining state spending in a time in which many argue for a smaller federal role in education.
But I object to framing the most basic steps to make access to college equitable as “bold”.
It’s the morally right thing to do.
Education and Class 