Giving Compass' Take:

• This audio documentary from APM Reports explores the state of higher education in America, and how it's worsening class divides, giving low-income kids fewer options at upward mobility.

• How can we solve the problem of college affordability? What programs will help expand opportunities for those who may not be able to seek a degree?

• Here's why we must create pathways to college for low-income women.

If you want to move up in America, go to college. That’s the advice people get. But new academic research suggests that chances for students from poor families in America to move up through higher education are shrinking. Elite colleges still don’t admit many students from poor backgrounds, and public universities are under increasing financial pressure to enroll wealthier students who can afford full tuition. For poor students, college isn’t the mobility-maker it once was.

That trend is happening at a time when social mobility in America is stagnating. The chances an American child will earn more than his or her parents has been declining: Children born in the 1940s had a 90 percent chance of surpassing their parents; kids born in 1980 had only a 50 percent chance of doing better. It’s now more difficult to break out of the class you’re born into. Children of well-to-do families are likely to stay that way, and children of poor families are likely to stay poor.

This APM Reports documentary explains what’s going on. We visit a college coming to terms with its own role in perpetuating class divides and another that has long been a “mobility maker” — but is struggling to stay that way.

Listen to the documentary about colleges and the American dream by APM Reports at The Hechinger Report.