Saturday, December 26, 2015

The rich-poor divide on America’s college campuses is getting wider, fast - JON MARCUS and HOLLY K. HACKER, Hechinger Report

There’s a campaign here to start a food bank for students who can’t afford food, even though many work full time. Many also are raising families. It’s a stark view of the reality of American higher education, in which rich kids go to elite private and flagship public campuses while poor kids — including those who score higher on standardized tests than their wealthier counterparts — end up at community colleges and regional public universities with much lower success rates, assuming they continue their educations at all. And new federal data analyzed by the Hechinger Report and the Huffington Post show the gap has been widening at a dramatically accelerating rate since the economic downturn began in 2008. http://hechingerreport.org/the-socioeconomic-divide-on-americas-college-campuses-is-getting-wider-fast/