The nation’s yawning wealth gap is a major reason why minority students end up borrowing more for college. Structural racism has created disparities in home ownership rates, income and other wealth-building vehicles, providing minority borrowers with fewer resources to tap to pay for college, on average.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson vowed that no student wishing to attend college would "be turned away because his family is poor."
Half a century later, a shift in the way college is funded and the declining fortunes of minorities and poor families since the recession have created a college-debt system that the left-leaning think tank Demos calls "deeply biased along class and racial lines."
Because college is increasingly financed by debt taken on by students, it's creating a system that's impacting differen
Most students go into debt to pay for college. And while no one wants to be in the red, a new report from left-leaning think tank Demos argues that the increasingly debt-financed higher education system in the United States is especially harmful to low-income, black and Latino kids.
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Given growing levels of student debt combined with stagnant incomes over the past few decades, “something has to give somewhere,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
Black culture and the role racism plays in black American history are discussed at length in the national dialogue around race relations. We regularly debate use of the “n-word,” for example, and the impact of historical racism on outcomes for black Americans.
The Affordable Care Act is probably the most progressive policy Americans born after the Great Society will witness in their lifetimes. It has saved tens of thousands of Americans from premature death and has already insured more than 12 million people. It has already defined Barack Obama’s legacy and will inevitably be at the center of the 2016 election. So why do so many on the left despise it?
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“More than half of education and related expenses at public universities is now paid for through tuition, up from about 35 percent in 2001,” wrote study author Robert Hiltonsmith, Demos’ senior policy analyst.
In essence, public universities are no longer public, he said: They have become de facto “subsidized private institutions.”
Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at Demos, said that the debt-free concept relies on what many higher education policy groups have long been saying: that states need to boost their spending on higher education and that student loan debt is crushing some borrowers and a drag on the economy.
Looking at the types of programs named last month, opponents to cuts see what they call a guise to squeeze a public education system tasked with growing demands and enrollment but declining funding.
"There are people in the policy and political sphere who really feel this issue is getting toward full-blown crisis level," said Robert Hiltonsmith, a senior analyst at New York-based policy center Demos.
Students living in President Hillary Clinton’s America could go to college debt-free, her campaign manager hinted earlier this week.
Making college more affordable is part of Clinton’s plan to boost quality of life for ordinary Americans, Robby Mook, “Hillary for America” campaign manager, told CNBC in response to a question about which age demographic will be the toughest for Clinton to lure.
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At the individual level, racial differences have been observed when it comes to accumulating wealth. A study recently published by the public policy organization Demos called “Racial Wealth Gap” found that the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has grown since the Great Recession. Specifically, it found that White households reported to have 17 times the wealth of Black households.
Public colleges and universities are supposed to be affordable options for students seeking a degree, but years of state budget cuts have led to increased tuition that families are struggling to afford. If states continue down this path of disinvestment, some will soon contribute nothing to higher education and leave schools and parents to fend for themselves, according to a series of new reports.
According to The New York Times' Paul F. Campos, tuition rates are more the victim of "the constant expansion of university administration" than state-funded budget cuts.
The skyrocketing price of college tuition at previously affordable state colleges and universities is a longstanding source of concern, especially for people graduating with mountains of student debt. People have many theories as to why this is happening: administrative bloat, too-high salaries for professors, or perhaps too many unnecessary new buildings.
While income is distributed unequally in the country, what few people know is how much more unequally wealth, financial assets and inheritances are distributed.
New Demos Report Shows State Disinvestment in Public Higher Education is Driving Tuition Increases
Decreased State Funding is Responsible for Nearly 80 Percent of the Rise in Public Education Tuition
Recently, there has been much debate about the real cause of tuition increases, which have risen by nearly $3,000 at public four-year universities in the last decade alone. To meet these costs, U.S. students must take on crushing levels of debt just to access education that was readily affordable for previous generations.