Educational inequality

This chart, from Postsecondary Education Opportunity, is one of the many pieces of data that I look to for inspiration and to help me keep things in perspective. This income inequality follows the same pattern as the class polarization we see in our labor market where there is a wide (and growing) gap between the rich and the poor. Since the late 1970’s and early 80’s, poor kids have been making the slowest gains in college participation.

But what I find to be more compelling (and more worrisome) is found in the chart below from the Education Trust. It comes as no surprise — Kati Haycock shows us that the nation’s “dumbest” rich kids go to college at the same rate as the nation’s “smartest” poor kids. Goes to show how colleges are serving as agents of social stratification and keeping class barriers neatly in tact, rather than acting as agents of social change…something ain’t right here.