Refinancing the College Dream

Apperently in the 1970 the rate of minorities and whites that enrolled in to Universities in USA was roughly similar, while now there is a wide gap.

(...)Since the 1980s, rapidly rising college prices have reduced the purchasing power of need-based financial aid. As a consequence, low-income students are left with little choice but to take out loans, attend less expensive colleges, or not attend college at all. St. John shows that they are doing all three in record numbers. The gap between the college participation rates of lower- and upper-income students is higher today than it has been at any time since the 1970s. Moreover, the gap has continued to widen each year even as federal and state governments appropriate ever larger amounts to higher education.(...)

I'm mentioning this kind of research mainly to gather indicators for the correlation between inequality in income and wealth, and the equality in politics and law. Indicators that can be used to explain the need for research that redefines equality. (Why examine economic inequality? That doesn't intefere with our rights that are set in the constitution, does it?) . Unfortunatly, this correlation is not self-evident for everybody.

Read a summary of the research here..

Refinancing the College Dream: Access, Equal Opportunity, and Justice for Taxpayers
Edward St. John with Eric H. Asker.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003