Similar conclusions and supportive data are also available in Walter Benn Michaels’ The Trouble with Diversity, in which he argues the dislocation in American education today is less related to race as it is with economic status.

Essentially what they demonstrate, then explain, with solid data is that a top-level, straight-A high school student from a lower quintile, has at best a 25% likelihood of finishing a 4-year degree, while a poorly performing C-student from an upper quintile is three times as likely to finish a university undergraduate program. Additionally, the student from one of the lower quintiles, if he or she does complete the four years, accompanying the baccalaureate degree will be $40,000 of student loan debt. The debt of the student from a more affluent family will likely be one quarter as much, and that he will also get more financial aid from the institution than will his less well of associate. Furthermore, the odds are exponentially enhanced for the wealthier student that his or her grade performance will be exceptional and that graduate studies will follow.

The rich will get richer, and the poor, poorer. We’ve seen ample evidence. We also know that there is not a shred of morality to it. But here’s why it’s happening, according to the cited program and the report, and, failing any serious change in our national priorities, why it will only accelerate, and why this country cannot afford to let it happen.

It is statistically more probably the economically poorer student will be from a single-parent home, and that the parent will have neither the time, nor the financial, nor the educational history to assist the child. That child’s K-12 school system will be substantially inferior, compared to that of the more fortunate child. It will have older, outdated texts, poorer facilities and poorer, less current technological assets, and a poorer paid faculty. If there are student counselors to help guide the student to the most appropriate college or university, they will be fewer in number, more overburdened, and less qualified to render any genuinely useful assistance.

The less-advantaged student will be required to work, to pay some but not nearly all of the costs of attending college. He will have less time for study, and will have poorer grades as a consequence, in comparison with his better advantaged compatriot. It will take him longer to graduate, if he graduates at all. And whether he does or does not graduate, he will leave with an extraordinary debt burden; one that very likely will not be soon paid off. (Not an endorsement of the candidate, but a few days ago, Michelle Obama admitted that it was only three years ago when she and Barak finally paid their student loans off.)

The less advantaged student sees all of this and is much more likely to decide the investment on what is at best a bet the ends will be sufficient to justify placing the wager. Fewer and fewer jobs are available with salaries sufficiently higher that incurring a mid-five figure debt load makes sense.

As to the upper-income student receiving more student aid from the universities is explained by the competition those schools engage for the top students. It’s all in the annual U.S News and World Report school rankings. All the majors and minors want to be in their respective top 100. It’s how they recruit professors, faculty, and alumni gifts. Because they want those students with the greatest chances helping the schools succeed, they fork over more Merit Scholarships to the high school grads with the highest GPAs and (not or) the greatest chances of successfully completing the 4-year program.

Disadvantaged and less well-advantaged students do not have those statistical benefits appending to their applications.

And the spiral downward for America and the disproportionate bulk of America’s youth continue unabated.

The consequences this poses for the United States are crisis serious. That both India and China screen through fine-mesh which of their students obtain a university education, the fact of their three- and four-times population sizes puts us at great peril of being overtaken economically by dint of their superior-trained workforce. This is a real danger for our national security that we cannot, must not dismiss. 

So what stands in our way of addressing the circumstance? Look and listen to your Republican relative or associate and to what those they vote for have been and are saying: “If it takes another 100 years in Iraq,” and “God abominates a homosexual lifestyle,” and “lower taxes,” . . ..  The key, perhaps the only key, is for this country to once again decide that education of ALL our youth is in fact a national priority, a priority of the first order.

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