Suppose you are in charge of a community college and there turns out to be a huge demand for math and English classes so that students are being repeatedly turned away because they are full. You might think that it is a good thing that people are seeking more education and that the solution is to open up more classes to meet that demand by (say) hiring more math and English teachers.
The governing board of Santa Monica College in California has a better idea. They decided to jack up the prices for just these courses to $200 per unit, compared to the $46 per unit for other courses. Thus they drove down demand and got more money at the same time. It is, as they say in the business world, a win-win situation. Except of course for poorer students who are put under additional hardship but they don’t count in this brave new market-driven world. NPR had an item this morning on this story because there have been strong protests and questions about whether it is even legal for community colleges to have such a two-tiered pricing system.
This move is part of an increasing trend in which the US educational system, rather than being a mechanism for increasing social mobility, is fast becoming one which entrenches privilege.
In theory, education is the great equalizer. A country in which anyone has access to a good, free education is one that enables class mobility by allowing people to aspire to great things. The US used to have a system that provided access to higher education to almost everyone. It was also, unlike in many countries, a forgiving system in that people could make bad decisions early in life and even drop out of school altogether and yet come back later to obtain qualifications that would enable them to move ahead. Perhaps nothing exemplified this more than the GI Bill. The military often serves as a source of employment for those with few other options and attracts a lot of people from the lower socio-economic strata. Upon completing their service, they could then barter that experience to gain access to higher education
But that period of expanded social mobility seems to be past. The US system seems to be rapidly transitioning to one that seeks to entrench, reproduce, and even increase privilege. Thomas Edsall has an article in which he provides evidence for the following set of propositions.
Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification.
“The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”
Post-secondary education is not, in fact, functioning to dissolve long-standing class hierarchies.
At the same time, colleges, both public and private, have shifted their own spending priorities, modestly increasing the investment in students from families in the lowest income quintile, while sharply boosting their investment in education of students from the top income quintile.
There is a substantial body of evidence that the system is failing to reward students with high test scores who come from low-income families.
The “income achievement gap” – differences in standard test scores and grade point averages – between children from families in the top 10 percent of the income distribution and those from families in the bottom ten percent has been growing.
The data show that a disproportionately large percentage of young adults from working-class families who, according to their test scores and grade point averages, are equipped to earn a B.A., are either not going to college, or failing to finish — relegating them to a life of stagnant or declining wages.
In some ways, what we are seeing here, like in the case of unpaid internships, is another manifestation of how the oligarchy, whose rapacious appetite has created the wide wealth and income divergence prevalent in the US, is now seeking to have their privileges even more deeply entrenched.
Edsall’s article is disturbing for anyone concerned about the widening class divisions but is well worth reading.