Monday, March 12, 2012

College education and the reproduction of privilege

Thomas Edsall takes apart a big chunk of the "only in America" upward mobility myth.  The reality is high income-high education is a self-perpetuating status story.  The kids of the college-educated middle class - like ours - score high on SAT's, go to competitive colleges, do well, repeat.  - GWC
The Reproduction of Privilege - NYTimes.com:
by Thomas B. Edsall

Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification, with a huge majority of the 24 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelor’s degree coming from families with earnings above the median income.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.

'via Blog this'

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