Goodbye, Horatio Alger
- March 23rd, 2007
- By Mark
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From: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070205/madrick, The Nation
By: Jeff Madrick
… Today the United States is two nations, but not so much divided between rich and poor, as former Senator John Edwards puts it, as between the well-educated and the rest. A college degree is not a guarantee of a middle-class life, but it has become pretty close to a necessity. And a college degree is expensive, even for those who attend public institutions. The demand for ever more education is not new in our history. But when Americans first needed a good primary education in the mid-1800s, state and local governments provided it, and made sure it was also available in poorer communities. Along with the distribution of land, free primary schooling was among the first income redistribution programs in the nation. In the early 1900s, when Americans needed high schools, state and local governments built thousands across the land, and graduation rates soared. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the federal government also actively supported new land-grant colleges, which became the basis of a state university system. The federal and state governments never went as far as they did with high school, however, and today the nation still treats higher education as if it is a privilege. There is federal and state aid, but increasingly it comes in the form of loans, leaving graduates even of state and community institutions burdened with record levels of debt. And tuition and room and board at private universities has risen considerably faster than has aid, even in the form of loans…..
…In sum, the dirty little secret is that the central role of college in getting a good job is now probably reinforcing a class society, not leveling it. Add to this the disparity in educational quality for pre-K and K-12, and we are getting to the heart of the matter. This is essentially why Bhashkar Mazumder and his colleagues are probably right when they argue statistically that mobility has declined in modern America. As Smeeding and Haveman summarize, “Though college attendance rates are rising, college graduation rates are growing slowly, if at all, and changes in the composition of the college-eligible and college graduating populations appear to perpetuate existing class differences.”
From: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070205/madrick
By: Jeff Madrick