Gettin' Schooled

We are assured by those who don't want to admit that growing inequality is a problem that we simply have an education gap. Those who are willing to work hard enough to get an education will do just fine in this worldview. One problem:

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

So college is roughly three times more expensive than it was 25 years ago. And what the numbers quoted above don't show is that the wealthy have accounted for most of the median income gain. For low income families, it more like 4 times more expensive. That is a pretty pricey ticket to the top.