Giving Compass' Take:

•  Sara Goldrick-Rab, writing for The Hechinger Report, sheds light on how coronavirus exacerbates inequalities in higher education, particularly the college financial aid system.

• What are institutions doing to help students and subsidize funding for them needed at this time?

• Read how colleges can help students throughout COVID-19. 

From the media coverage, you’d think that the current crisis was mainly a problem of dorms closing at Harvard and Amherst. That’s not true. Rather, the current pandemic is exposing some of the devastating consequences of the vast inequality that marks all aspects of American society.

Inequality hits hard in higher education. For more than fifty years, we’ve been told that giving low-income students financial aid makes college affordable. Over the past decade, researchers like me have shown what low-income students know in their bones: It’s a lie.

The truth is that the preponderance of money in higher education, including public subsidies and private philanthropy, flows to students with the greatest wealth. The nation’s college dollars are concentrated in the elite private colleges, which wealthy students disproportionately attend, rather than the nation’s public regional universities and community colleges where most Americans go.

Indeed, just 25 institutions hold about half of all U.S. endowment assets. Although Covid-19 is creating a whole new wave of emergencies, the risk of homelessness is nothing new to the millions of college students who were already in financially precarious circumstances before the coronavirus hit.

The financial-aid system in the United States is supposed to level these inequalities at least enough to let low-income students have a good chance to get an education. In my research, I have found that the financial-aid system often fails and, indeed, imposes heavy costs on students in terms of time burdens as well as application and compliance requirements that prevent students with significant need from getting help.

Read the full article about college financial aid by Sara Goldrick-Rab at The Hechinger Report.