Giving Compass' Take:

• Education, particularly higher education, is not the great equalizer and wealth distribution as well as family income are contributing factors to getting a bachelor's degree. 

• How can higher education institutions create more accessible programs or preparation tools for students who need them?

• Read about how higher education could be doing more to enhance students' social mobility. 

Education is supposed to be “the great equalizer”, in Horace Mann’s famous phrase. But too often, the education system ends up perpetuating inequality, especially across generations. The higher education sector is a particularly acute case in point, as the book from Harry Holzer and Sandy Baum, Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students, vividly demonstrates.

The returns to a post-secondary education are variable, but on average remain high. The main problem is not unfair competition in the labor market, it is unequal preparation for it.

Family income seems to matter most in the middle of the academic distribution. As Baum and Holzer write: “Among those in the 3.0 to 3.4 GPA category, the gap in bachelor’s degree attainment between the highest- and lowest-income dependent students is a stunning 37 percentage points (56 and 19 percent, respectively).”

Read the full article on colleges by Richard V. Reeves at Brookings