American Education: The Modern Feudal System
We have written about the impact of state cuts to fund higher education for students and the impact that has on student tuition (it goes up) in great detail. The bottom line is that every $ cut from student education is one more step towards an unequal and imbalanced society. And this lack of funding and ever increasing school tuition makes higher education out of reach for more and more Americans every year to the extent that now the #1 predictor of a person’s lifetime income…is their parent’s income. Think about that for a minute. To read more about the impact of state cuts on higher education – click HERE.
The NY Times calls it The Reproduction of Privilege - a very thorough and well put together article:
Seventy-four percent of those now attending colleges that are classified as “most competitive,” a group that includes schools like Harvard, Emory, Stanford and Notre Dame, come from families with earnings in the top income quartile, while only three percent come from families in the bottom quartile.
Contrary to those who say that this is the meritocracy at work, differences in scores on standardized tests do not fully explain class disparity in educational outcomes. When high-scoring students from low-income families are compared to similarly high-scoring students from upper-income families, 80 percent of the those in the top quarter of the income distribution go on to get college degrees, compared to just 44 percent of those in the bottom quarter.
Another way to explain that is to say…all things being equal – take two kids with similar grades and scores and the one with more money has more opportunity over and over.
“The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”
~Anthony Carnevale
Paul Krugman refers to it as Building A Caste Society:
Next time someone tells you that he’s in favor of equality of opportunity, not equality of results, ask him whether he proposes to reverse the decline in Pell grants and other programs giving educational opportunity to the less fortunate. If he demurs, he’s a hypocrite.
For those who go to college – there is a clear correlation between income and opportunity. Imagine what this graph looks like for the 1% of highest earners in America:
Source: Download PPT
“Parental income is a better predictor of a child’s future in America than in much of Europe, implying that social mobility is less powerful. “
~The Economist
Completion of Bachelor Degree programs rises steadily by family income level:
Source: Download PPT
“If our poorest young people earned college degrees at the same rate as our wealthiest, the U.S. would already be first in the world in college attainment.”
~The Education Trust
Daniel Pink put together a great graph and writes:
Take a look at the chart below. On the horizontal axis is family income. On the vertical axis is the combined average SAT score for students from families in each group. The general story is pretty simple: The higher the parents’ income, the higher their kids’ SAT scores.
There is a correlation between cuts in state funding for higher education and student tuition. Historically – higher education was always subsidized but after significant cuts to funding….tuition just goes up.
Source: Download PPT
In August of 2009 – Nicholas Kristof at the NY Times wrote about education…an excerpt:
I’ve often focused on education as the greatest need for America, but even there the feudal structure is replicated. There are first-rate schools for the elite, second-rate schools for the strivers, and execrable schools for the masses. At the bad schools, teachers don’t even bother to show up. This highly stratified system tends to perpetuate an ossified economic and social structure, and creates less room for the country to innovate and build or use human capital.
Except – in this article labeled Feudalism in Pakistan – he’s talking about Pakistan. I just put exchanged the words America and Pakistan and ladies and gentlemen…we have a winner.
