Pew’s recent statistics show that for those with only a high school diploma, the unemployment rate is over 12%. For those with a four year degree, it is 4%. But how did we get to an environment that on the one hand makes college the central pillar of economic success, in a knowledge based economy, and yet because of costs, pushes it further and further out of the reach of middle and lower socioeconomic groups?
Was this an accident of public policy, or a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the elite? Suzanne Mettler thinks both are true. She details her work in Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream
.My conversation with Suzanne Mettler:
