"Universities Meant to Ameliorate Social Inequality Are Instead Exacerbating It"

"Ultimately, Arizona shows two ways that universities can respond to government defunding. They can become country clubs, or they can become 'knowledge enterprises' that rely on the Internet to deliver education to enormous, geographically diffuse student bodies. Either way, the gap between the type of education available to children from affluent families and that offered to everyone else is going to grow. There was a moment in American history, says Newfield, when 'the kind of thing that the Bush family could take for granted at Yale became possible at U. Michigan for somebody whose father was a middle manager.' That moment is over."


Michelle Goldberg in The Nation looks at the future of higher education.