ED Secretary John King on Access, Affordability and Completion - US Dept of Ed

When it comes to student access, we need to acknowledge the ways in which we are becoming a caste system of colleges and universities – in which wealthier high school students get personalized college counseling, rigorous coursework like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, and disproportionate admittance to the nation's top universities, while, all too often, poorer students get shortchanged on these things. When it comes to affordability, we need to recognize that when poor students borrow at least half their annual household income just to attend college, we are dangerously close to college obstructing, rather than driving, social mobility in this country. And when it comes to completion, we need to acknowledge that, although the percentage of 23-year-olds with some college experience has increased considerably, their likelihood of graduating strongly correlates to income or racial background, which means that we must shift our attention toward the more essential metric of success: degree attainment. http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/ensuring-higher-education-all