How American Higher Education Reproduces Inequality

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the average cost of attending a public university in the United States is $8,202 per year, making it the most expensive worldwide. The same can be said for private tuition, which averages around $21,189 a year. If education equals upward mobility, how are students expected to progress in a society where a college degree is increasingly tied to household income?

Naturally, a makeshift solution comes in taking out loans, which in reality far from alleviates the problem. According to Forbes Magazine, student loan debt, which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, totals an overwhelming $1.3 trillion in the United States.

If education equals upward mobility, how are students expected to progress in a society where a college degree is increasingly tied to household income?

Given a societal pressure to attend university combined with the cost of tuition, more and more of today’s students are becoming caught in a cycle in which they must choose a rigid path of study in order to pay back their debt. This disrupts the “natural” progression of adulthood, in which graduates would otherwise experiment with their degrees or careers, save up to buy a house, or pursue travel, but instead must repay their student loans.

Chained to such debt, former students remain locked in an economic system that values long working hours, climbing up the corporate ladder, and the infamous 2-week vacation, leading to unprecedented anxiety for many. 

Income Inequality in Higher Education

In February 2016, I received my acceptance letter from New York University (NYU), ranked as the 43rd best university globally. I had spent the last four years preparing for that day – AP classes, SAT workshops, tedious extracurriculars. I had followed a system that rewarded thoughtless diligence, not once considering the inequalities that that system reproduced.

But as I began university that fall, I began to notice a more permanent pattern. “Backed by its $3.5 billion endowment as well as its considerable fundraising prowess,” report Annie Waldman and Sisi Wei of ProPublica, New York University “has built campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, invested billions in SoHo real estate, and given its star faculty loans to buy summer homes.”

University tuition costs $53,310 for a full academic year, which doesn’t include room and board, books and supplies, and transportation, which puts the real price at around $60,000 – $70,000. Furthermore, NYU gives out modest financial aid. “The school’s Pell Grant recipients – students from families that make less than $30,000 a year – owe an average of $23,250 in federal loans after graduation.”

Income inequality has become engrained in American life, and no institution demonstrates this more than that of higher education, especially in “elite” universities such as NYU. 

Moving to New York forced me to confront wide-sweeping economic inequality for the first time in my life. I was in an elite school with a disproportionate number of wealthy students in an affluent area of New York City. Meanwhile, nearly 1.7 million New Yorkers were living in poverty between 2011-2015 – many of whom were students – at a poverty rate higher than the U.S. average. 

The contrast in wealth from neighborhood to neighborhood was staggering. Scattered among the trendy restaurants and shops in the East Village were countless homeless individuals, soup kitchens, and aid centers that were easier to disregard than acknowledge.

Unfortunately, the rampant inequality I witnessed for the first time at NYU echoed a problem of a far greater magnitude on a national scale. Income inequality has become engrained in American life, and no institution demonstrates this more than that of higher education, especially in “elite” universities such as NYU. 

In Favor of the Wealthy

Undergraduate enrollment rates have more than doubled in the last half-century, requiring colleges to be more selective in their admission criteria. Applicants must have excellent SAT and AP scores, club and volunteer experience, and a social network to fall back on before they might even be considered for some of the country’s top schools. Unsurprisingly, students from well-off families tend to make up the majority in Ivy league colleges – no doubt due to college endowments – but this appears to be a general trend even among lower-ranking universities.

Naturally, wealthy students are more likely to go to private high schools with better access to facilities such as tutoring or SAT prep programs, which increases their likelihood of being accepted to a top-ranking college. For students who do not have access to such programs, they must rely on the public school system, which is consistently ranked as “underperforming” in comparison to other OECD education systems.

As a result, lower-income students are falling increasingly behind. For those that manage to overcome the “income barrier”, the price tag of a college degree puts them at a significant disadvantage later on in their career. While wealthier students can afford to take highly-competitive unpaid internships, for example, students from low-income families often have to work poorly paid jobs in addition to studying. This affects not only their academic performance but their competitiveness in the job market. 

For those that manage to overcome the “income barrier”, the price tag of a college degree puts them at a significant disadvantage later on in their career.

Going to university in the United States not only weighs these students down academically and financially, but it also inhibits them from pursuing riskier yet more rewarding career choices with a higher pay-off, especially in the arts. Students from wealthy backgrounds remain unscathed throughout the entire higher education process, whereas poorer students are increasingly faced with high debt and limited professional opportunities.

With education often acting as a “make-or-break” determinant of professional success, economic inequality in higher education translates to an overall inequality of opportunity.

Decay of the American Dream

In essence, university in the United States has exacerbated income inequality, which has, in turn, impeded social mobility. If only the wealthiest Americans can afford a college degree, then education ceases to be a vehicle for climbing the economic ladder. 

As the wealthy continue to gain in economic power and thereby political clout, the United States may eventually join the ranks of nations wherein the place of social advancement is a wealth gap fuelled by rigged institutions. Indeed, it appears as if this is already the case. The United States ranks as 7th among OECD countries most affected by income inequality, succeeded only by South Africa, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico, Turkey and Bulgaria, all of which – with perhaps the exception of Costa Rica – are plagued by political instability. 

With equality of opportunity being at the forefront of the American dream, the decaying of social mobility is reflected by the decaying of the American dream. In the end, if we do not reform university in the United States, thereby improving social mobility, it is ultimately our democracy that will pay the price.