America's Top Colleges Have A Rich-Kid Problem

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-top-colleges-have-a-rich-kid-problem-2013-5

In case you ever wondered just how much wealthy students dominate America's top colleges, here's a nice illustration from a new report by the Century Foundation.

At the most selective schools in the country,* 70 percent of students come from the wealthiest quarter of U.S. families.
Just 14 percent come from the poorest half.

And while these statistics date back to 2006, I think it's safe to say they haven't changed greatly in the last few years.



Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/americas-top-colleges-have-a-rich-kid-problem/276195/#ixzz2UIoQqOc0

[HiPointDem]

1. kr

i went to a middle-ranked uni & the top-ranked uni in my state, and also to a community college.

the best prof i ever had taught at the community college.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

2. i started at community college

and found the profs and instructors there very interested in your success and as you say, my best professor was there (very sharp, dynamic, made the material come alive). when i got to university, the differences in socio-economic groups was incredibly apparent and while that added enough stress to trying to find my way in a suddenly bigger world, the bigger stress was the malaise and indifference of many of the professors... the TA's on the whole were pretty good, though.

sP

[Sanity Claws]

4. I expect the problem has worsened since 2006

[DonCoquixote]

5. This goes to show what College really is now

A way to ensure the privilege of the rich is defended, and that any middle class kid that might compete with them has debt to keep them down.

[William769]

6. kick & recommended.

[sofa king]

7. Seent it.

For years I worked at a reputable University famed for the number of eventual CEOs it produces. One of their alumni granted the U. enough money to put a person on the moon, to be allocated to reducing tuition costs for low-income students.

What did the U. do after that? They immediately raised tuition across the board and froze wages for University employees. The idea, I think, was for the low-income students to become the new slaves who would do all the hard work there, paid a pittance out of the trust fund..

But it didn't happen. Poor kids suffer from nutritional and educational deficiencies that reduce their representation (the school has very high academic requirements). Those who do break through that ceiling can go anywhere they wish and for some reason shun a former slave-state school whose main claim to fame is that it enshrined a generation of war criminals. And the rich kids are indifferent to work, criticism, and punishment.

The U. was not too blind to fail to foresee these problems; I think the dramatic rate-hike was designed to create poor students among the rich kids by pricing tuition out of the range of many of the students who were already there--making them dependent upon work-study to get out. A huge number of them transferred out that year, instead.

I expect the place to drop out of the Top 25 in their category any year now, and it will soon regress to its antebellum status.