What Is the Future of Higher Education? by Espejo Roman;

Author:Espejo, Roman;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
Published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

David Francis Mihalyfy, “Higher Ed’s For-Profit Future,” Jacobin, June 7, 2014. Copyright © 2014 by Jacobin. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

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Economic and Racial Segregation Must Be Addressed in Higher Education

Richard D. Kahlenberg

Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, where he directs its Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal.

While colleges and universities can be credited for educating a more diverse range of students, this encouraging trend is accompanied by increased inequality in higher education. At competitive four-year institutions, high-income students significantly outnumber low-income students, and at community colleges, low-income students outnumber high-income students. Such segregation impacts academic outcomes; strong evidence demonstrates that in economically and racially integrated elementary and secondary schools, all students perform better. Colleges and universities must undertake efforts comparable to those of elementary and secondary schools to bridge the education divide, such as responding to racial and economic stratification and attracting more middle-income students to community colleges.

Our higher-education system is often thought of as a model for elementary and secondary education because top American universities rank among the very best in the world. But maybe it’s the reverse that is true. After all, only about half of first-time college students earn certificates or degrees within six years, a completion rate much lower than among high-school students. At community colleges, while 81 percent of first-time entering students say they would like to earn bachelor’s degrees, only 12 percent do so within six years.

Why are completion rates so low in higher education, especially community colleges? One reason, according to a blue-ribbon panel assembled by the Century Foundation, is that higher education has not directly confronted the growing economic and racial separation of students within its ranks. Largely separate sets of institutions for white and minority students—and for rich and poor—are rarely equal, either in K-12 schooling or in higher education.

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