The Misleading Myth of the College Premium

For decades, the so-called college premium—the idea that earning a college degree guarantees significantly higher lifetime earnings compared to a high school diploma—has been used to sell higher education to the American public. Politicians, economists, and university marketing teams alike have touted the promise of upward mobility through higher education. But this narrative is increasingly misleading, especially for working-class, first-generation, and marginalized students.

The College Premium: Averages vs. Reality

At its core, the college premium is based on averages. Federal and private data sources often claim that college graduates earn, on average, $1 million more over their lifetimes than those with only a high school diploma. But averages conceal enormous variation. They ignore who goes to college, where they go, what they study, and how much they borrow to get there.

That $1 million premium is skewed by high earners—doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business executives who often come from wealthier families and attend elite institutions. Meanwhile, a large and growing number of students graduate with low-paying degrees, insurmountable debt, and job prospects that resemble those of high school graduates from decades past.

Who Gets Misled—and Hurt

Students from working-class backgrounds often attend less selective colleges and universities—regional public schools, underfunded community colleges, or even predatory for-profit institutions. These students are more likely to work while enrolled, take longer to graduate, or drop out altogether. The result: little to no earnings gain, but significant debt burdens. For them, the college premium is often negative.

Systemic racism in the labor market erodes the supposed premium for Black and Latino graduates. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Black college graduates earn roughly 20% less than white peers with the same degrees. They also face higher unemployment rates, especially in economic downturns. When combined with higher average debt loads, the risk-to-reward ratio becomes starkly inequitable.

Not all degrees yield high returns. Many students major in education, social work, or the arts—not because these fields are unworthy, but because they are essential to society. Yet these professions are often undervalued and underpaid. Graduates may find themselves stuck with large student loans and salaries that barely cover basic living expenses. In these cases, the premium barely materializes.

Roughly 40% of college students in the U.S. fail to graduate within six years. These students take on debt but receive none of the (alleged) earnings boost associated with a degree. They are the most vulnerable population—often saddled with loans they can't discharge in bankruptcy and credentials that offer no labor market value.

A Shifting Landscape

The labor market has changed dramatically. Credential inflation means more jobs require degrees without necessarily offering higher pay. Meanwhile, automation, outsourcing, and gig work have made many once-stable jobs insecure. A bachelor’s degree is no longer the ticket to the middle class that it once was, especially for those without access to elite networks and institutions.

At the same time, the cost of college has skyrocketed. Student loan debt now tops $1.7 trillion, and repayment burdens are keeping young adults from buying homes, saving for retirement, or starting families. The financial risks of college now rival the benefits, especially for the very populations who are promised it will change their lives.

Toward a More Honest Conversation

Rather than clinging to the college premium as a universal truth, policymakers, educators, and the public must grapple with its limits. We need transparent data on outcomes by institution, major, race, and income. We must invest in alternative pathways, including apprenticeships, vocational training, and debt-free community college. We must hold bad actors accountable, including for-profit colleges and institutions with high debt-to-earnings ratios. And we must stop blaming individuals for “bad choices” when the system itself is rigged to benefit the privileged few.

---

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to investigate and report on the disparities, disinformation, and systemic failures within U.S. higher education—because transparency and justice matter more than mythology.

Cambridge Chancellor Candidate Urges UK Universities to Welcome US Academic Exiles

Gina Miller, the high-profile British activist and candidate for Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, is calling on UK universities to seize a rare moment of global academic realignment by welcoming American scholars fleeing political repression and institutional decay in the United States. Miller, who rose to prominence for her legal battles against Brexit, told The Telegraph that Britain’s top institutions—particularly Cambridge—should become havens for academics and students seeking intellectual freedom and safety as Donald Trump’s political resurgence escalates.

“This last year we’ve seen the biggest uptick in U.S. students and academics looking for opportunities outside the country,” said Miller. “Why is Cambridge not making the most of that?”

Her comments arrive as the U.S. faces what many describe as an academic crisis. Donald Trump’s war on higher education has included freezing billions in research funds, shutting off international student visas, dismantling diversity and equity programs, and threatening tenure protections. Scholars have increasingly found themselves under attack—not only from politicians but from coordinated campaigns of harassment, surveillance, and intimidation. The chilling atmosphere has led some to flee, while others are actively exploring exit strategies.

Canada has emerged as the leading destination for these academic exiles. Among them is Dr. Cornel West, the noted philosopher and public intellectual, who accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Massey College in 2024. West cited political censorship and corporate interference at elite U.S. universities as the primary reasons for his departure. Similarly, sociologist Dr. Saida Grundy left Boston University for McGill University in Montreal after sustained threats and harassment tied to her anti-racist scholarship. Grundy has spoken openly about feeling physically and intellectually safer in Canada.

The University of British Columbia welcomed Dr. Michael Sauder, a tenured sociologist from the University of Iowa, after he resigned in protest of proposed state legislation targeting faculty speech and tenure. In another example, Dr. Janelle Wong, a scholar of American politics and Asian American studies, relocated to York University after a combination of political threats and defunding of federal grants for her research on democracy and racial equity.

These are not isolated moves, but part of a growing wave of flight from U.S. institutions—especially public colleges in Republican-controlled states—where academic freedom is rapidly eroding. What had once seemed like hypothetical fears are now becoming lived realities for faculty, staff, and students.

Miller argues that UK institutions, particularly those with Cambridge’s global stature, should respond to this moment by offering refuge and opportunity. While Canada and Germany have already implemented formal “exile campus” initiatives, British universities have largely stayed silent—perhaps out of concern about being seen as anti-American.

But for Miller, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and was persuaded to run by a group of Cambridge faculty, this silence represents a missed moral and strategic opportunity. In her view, Cambridge could not only safeguard endangered scholars but also reinvigorate its intellectual community and global relevance.

She has also pledged to bring her long-standing campaign for transparency and ethical accountability to the university, including a commitment to divest Cambridge’s £4 billion endowment from arms companies. She praised King’s College’s recent decision to cut financial ties with weapons firms and argued that the university must act as a beacon of values as well as knowledge.

Miller has been critical of past chancellors who, she claims, have failed to use their positions to speak on important global issues or promote UK higher education on the world stage. “Why is Cambridge not at Davos, for example?” she asked. “Cambridge has the opportunity to be an ambassador not just for itself, but for the entire sector.”

Her campaign intersects with rising concerns about authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, and the hollowing out of liberal institutions worldwide. She warned that the line between anti-elitism and anti-scholarship is eroding, as exemplified by Trump’s alignment with populist tech leaders while undermining academic expertise.

Miller’s own life story, from her childhood in Guyana to legal triumphs against the British government, reflects the kind of global connectivity she envisions for Cambridge. She also shared a personal connection to the university: the rare cancer she is now battling was genetically profiled by a research team at Cambridge, deepening her admiration for its life-saving scientific work.

“If Cambridge is going to lead, it has to get off the page and into the world,” she said. “It must act now to uphold the values of open inquiry and human progress. If we wait until universities fall to authoritarian control, it will be too late.”

As Trump’s influence reshapes the American university landscape, the choice for UK higher education is stark: retreat inward, or rise to the challenge of global academic leadership. Gina Miller is betting that Cambridge still has the courage—and conscience—to do the latter.

---

For more on academic freedom, global education policy, and higher education in crisis, follow The Higher Education Inquirer.

A Century of Influence: How Financiers Came to Rule the Ivory Tower

In his recent study, Elite Embeddedness, sociologist Charlie Eaton, alongside Albina Gibadullina, delves into the increasing presence of financiers on university boards. Their research reveals that private equity and hedge fund managers have become disproportionately represented among trustees at elite universities. This trend is not merely coincidental; it reflects a broader historical pattern of financial elites seeking influence within higher education institutions.

Eaton's findings indicate that these financiers often experience enhanced investment returns after securing trustee positions. The access to privileged information and networks within these academic institutions provides them with strategic advantages in their financial ventures. This dynamic underscores the symbiotic relationship between elite universities and the financial sector, where academic prestige and financial capital mutually reinforce each other.

This phenomenon is not new. Over a century ago, Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America (1918) critiqued the commercialization of universities and the encroachment of business interests into academic life. Similarly, Upton Sinclair's The Goose-Step (1923) exposed the influence of wealthy elites over educational institutions, highlighting the erosion of academic independence. More recently, Davarian Baldwin's In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower (2021) examines how universities have become entangled with urban development and corporate interests, often at the expense of their educational missions.

Eaton's earlier work, Bankers in the Ivory Tower (2022), further explores this entanglement, illustrating how financial elites have not only shaped university governance but also influenced policies that affect student debt and access to education. The increasing reliance on endowments and financial markets has led to a stratification within higher education, where elite institutions thrive while others struggle to maintain funding and accessibility.

The implications of this financial entrenchment are profound. As universities become more aligned with financial interests, questions arise about their commitment to public service, equitable access, and academic freedom. The historical trajectory from Veblen and Sinclair to Eaton and Baldwin suggests a persistent pattern of financial influence that challenges the foundational ideals of higher education.

Understanding this century-long evolution is crucial for stakeholders aiming to reclaim the educational mission of universities. By recognizing the historical context and the mechanisms of financial influence, there is an opportunity to advocate for governance structures that prioritize educational integrity over financial gain.

As Eaton's research highlights, addressing the overrepresentation of financiers on university boards is a step toward restoring balance and ensuring that higher education serves the broader public interest rather than narrow financial agendas.

Higher Education in Retreat (Gary Roth)

 [Editor's note: This article first appeared in the Brooklyn Rail.  We thank the Brooklyn Rail for allowing us to repost this.]

For decades, the top-tier colleges and universities—often represented by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but including a few dozen other private and public institutions as well—have reshaped themselves to accommodate the rapidly-changing demographic profile of the United States.1 From all appearances, the universities were also in harmony with the sensibilities and preferences of the country’s leading citizens. Key moments, like the sanctioning of gay marriage that found support from wide-spread sectors of the upper class, seemed to solidify the drift towards a diverse and tolerant social order, one that resonated not only domestically but internationally as well.

The future evolution of civil society was, in this way of thinking, firmly and finally in hand. Bitter acrimony might characterize the political world or single-issue items like abortion, but actual developments outweighed the leftover pockets of resistance, which in any case were thought to be localized in less significant parts of the country and the world and could at best only slow the inevitable. How hard people pushed for change would ultimately determine the future.

This somnambulistic mode of thought pervaded the university world and also wide swaths of the liberal public. It helps explain the ease with which parts of the university community, after an initial round of caution, joined hands with its political opposition to suppress the campus protests that developed in response to Israel’s brutality towards Palestinian civilians.

Appeasement and accommodation, while regrettable within the academic community because of the retreat from sacrosanct ideas such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, nonetheless set the stage for developments that followed the national elections at the end of last year. Martin Niemöller’s self-confession about his support—as a Lutheran pastor—for the German fascists during the 1930s captures nicely the corner into which the higher education community had boxed itself:

When the Nazis came for the Communists, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a communist.
When they came for the trade unionists, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a trade unionist.
When they jailed the Social Democrats, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a social democrat.
When they jailed the Jews, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest.2

Without a vibrant protest movement already in place to push against harsh and arbitrary actions, the universities seemed to have little choice but to acquiesce to a regime that seems interested in flattening the population into an undifferentiated mass.3

Because appeasement and accommodation have been embraced as proactive survival tactics, resistance has centered on a judicial system thought to be less conservative than the groups that have come to dominate the executive and legislative branches of government, a judiciary conceptualized as a mediator rather than an initiator and enforcer of social conflict. Given the legal system’s history, this too becomes another moment of sleep walking. It is a huge distance from the dynamism that characterized the world of higher education not long ago.

Among the most dynamic institutions have been the privately-governed universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Not just their social vision, but their great wealth allowed them to embrace initiatives that stand at the forefront of attempts to remold institutional behavior. Front and center have been efforts to diversify the upper ranks of corporate, governmental, and non-profit establishments such that they too reflect the diversity of the population at large.

Previous attempts to diversify the collegiate student body by means of affirmative action programs that focused on underrepresented groups, especially African Americans and Latines, were struck down by the judiciary. Anti-affirmative action backlash took aim at the admissions policies at highly-competitive graduate programs, such as elite law and medical schools, and on prestigious scholarship programs. The backlash, in other words, concentrated on the byways that provided access into the upper levels of society.

Schools and programs that served the remainder of the population were not of particular concern. Graduate programs in public administration, for instance, where the training of mid-level administrators is the aim, rarely came under attack, whether located at medium-sized liberal arts colleges or regional state universities. These types of institutions also suspended their affirmative action initiatives, but mostly as preemptive moves to avoid future litigation. By strategically targeting the institutions at the top, the entire system was enticed to reorient itself.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives were one of the responses to both past and recent judicial rollbacks. These were initiatives directed toward the recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups rather than their admission and funding. DEI initiatives, though, did not deal with the cost of attendance, which at the elite private institutions is beyond everyone’s means except for the wealthy. For tuition, room, and board to attend as an undergraduate, the current cost for the 2025–26 school year at Princeton, for example, is $82,650. Fees are extra.4

Financial incentives based on socioeconomic status, however, were a strategy that seemingly silenced all critics. The most generous programs encompass virtually all applicants from either a working or middle class background; that is, everyone except the elite is covered as long as household or parental income is below $200,000 annually. At Princeton, the limit is $100,000, pegged considerably above the level of median household income in the United States.5

This allows the institutions to be “needs-blind” and recruit students no matter their financial situation. A tuition-free college education—once a hallmark of publicly-funded institutions—has been revived at the upper end of the spectrum, a profound assertion by these institutions of their intent to further the socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic integration of the upper class.

One consequence of these cost-free programs is that it is often cheaper to attend an elite college like Princeton than to attend the nearby publicly-funded state university, the flagship institution—in this case, Rutgers University-New Brunswick. These figures are drawn from government calculations that show actual expenses for families at different tiers of the socioeconomic spectrum:6

CHART 1 – ANNUAL UNDERGRADUATE NET COST OF ATTENDANCE

Family income	PRINCETON	RUTGERS-NEW BRUNSWICK
Less than $ 30,000	$  2,518	$15,885
$30,001 - $ 48,000	$  4,682	$15,532
$48,001 - $ 75,000	$  7,652	$17,578
$75,001 - $110,000	$13,849	$24,020
Over $110,001	$39,943	$33,460

 

A significant reversal has taken place. The elite privates have become the exemplars for the entire system of higher education, not just academically but economically as well. It makes economic sense for the poor to attend elite private institutions (assuming they are offered one of the few open slots) and for the rich to attend publicly-funded ones. Because student loans are not part of these aid packages, students at elite colleges graduate with less debt than students at nearby public flagships.7

We find, then, that the more selective the college—Princeton admits five percent of applicants, Rutgers-New Brunswick sixty-five percent—the cheaper it is to attend, and the more likely you are to graduate—at Princeton ninety-eight percent, at Rutgers-New Brunswick eighty-four percent—the less that debt encumbers you afterwards. And what’s true about the comparison of Princeton and its nearby publicly-funded flagship is true in other states also: Harvard and University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Yale and the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and so on.

Just as important, student socioeconomic profiles parallel those at nearby public flagships. At Princeton, one in five (twenty percent) of its students receives a Pell Grant. These are the federally-funded grants awarded when family income is below, roughly, $50,000. Pell Grants thus serve as a reasonable measure of the density of students from working class and poor backgrounds at a particular institution. At Rutgers-New Brunswick, it is one in four students (28 percent).

Socioeconomic programs like the one at Princeton exist at more than a hundred public and privately-governed college institutions. Taken altogether, there has been a quiet undermining of commonly-accepted assumptions regarding elite institutions and their public counterparts. That the private elite institutions often outperform the public sector ones in matters traditionally considered the latter’s prerogative shows how deeply intertwined the private and public sectors have become.

Yet for all their efforts, the elite institutions still do not reflect the demographics of the population at large. This is true for the elite privates and also for public flagships. Nationally, thirty percent of students receive Pell Grants, a measure of the degree to which the working class has become a substantial part of the university community. At top-tier schools, however, fewer of their students receive Pell Grants. At Harvard, it is seventeen percent; at Yale, nineteen percent; at the Texas flagship, UT Austin, twenty-five percent; at the Florida flagship, UF Gainesville, twenty-three percent.8

That socioeconomic diversity is lower at elite privates and public flagships than is the national norm is not surprising, given the amply-documented correlation between parental finances and scholastic performance.9 Students from wealthier backgrounds, as a rule, perform better academically and are more likely to attend prestigious institutions. Still, the top-tier institutions have come a long way from the times in which they represented, with few exceptions: only the elite.

At places like Princeton, the student body is nearly as diverse racially and ethnically as at the nearby state flagship. According to the broad demographic categories used in government publications and legislation, we find that at both Princeton and Rutgers-New Brunswick, there are no majorities, only minorities:10

CHART 2 – RACE AND ETHNICITY AT TOP-TIER INSTITUTIONS

(in percents)	PRINCETON	RUTGERS-NEW BRUNSWICK
Asian	24	33
Black (African American)	9	7
Hispanic (Latine)	10	16
White	36	31
Non-Resident Alien (International Students)	12	7
Two or More Races (Multiracial)	7	4

 

Immigration and migration initially produced majority-less campuses at urban public institutions; in other words, at institutions located in major metropolitan areas—places where jobs are numerous and resistance to newcomers often diffuse and undirected. At Princeton and other elite institutions, however, it is not demographics, but merit—in combination with these economically-based financial aid packages—that drive the dynamic.

Forty-five years ago, individuals self-identified as white represented eighty-four percent of all undergraduates but only seventy-seven percent of eighteen to twenty-four year-olds (Chart 3). Higher education was a significant cultural dynamic for this group. A major reversal has since taken place, in which the white population now accounts for fifty-two percent of eighteen to twenty-four year-olds and the same percentage of college students. Their lead has been lost.

Every other group has moved in the opposite direction, increasing its presence within the collegiate system faster than their increase in either population or the prime college-attending age cohort (eighteen to twenty-four year-olds). The latter group has been relatively stable within the Black population, for instance, only increasing one percentage point from thirteen to fourteen percent during those decades. But the presence of Black students among undergraduate college students has increased from nine to thirteen percent. Among the Latine (Hispanic) population, the increase has been dramatic. While their share of eighteen to twenty-four year-olds tripled from eight to twenty-four percent, their share among undergraduates increased more than five-fold.

Affirmative action and DEI initiatives fostered the importance of a college education as a means to circumvent obstacles within the economy:11

CHART 3 – RACIAL & ETHNIC DIVERSITY

	18-24 YEAR-OLDS		HIGHER EDUCATION
(in percents)	1980	2022	1980	2022
Asian	2	6	2	8
Black	13	14	9	13
Hispanic	8	24	4	22
White	77	52	84	52
Two or More Races	—	4	—	4

 

Over the past half century, a leveling of the population has taken place, with the Black, Latine, and white communities all participating in post-secondary education at rates equivalent to their respective shares of the prime college-attending age group (eighteen to twenty-four year-olds).

This equalization is an aspect of reality that has been neglected by the academic community, which has generally focused on the advantages members of the white community have both educationally and occupationally due to kinship and parental networks, friendship circles, neighborhood contacts, and a lack of discrimination based on skin color. Implicit in this view is that whites need not rely on the educational system as heavily as other groups, since alternative avenues of advancement are available.

In many of the top institutions, the fall-off of white students is quite pronounced:

CHART 4 - DIVERSITY AT PRIVATE ELITES AND PUBLIC FLAGSHIPS

(in percents)	Higher Education	Harvard	Yale	Columbia	UPenn	UT Austin	UF Gainesville
Asian	8	22	23	18	28	25	12
Black	13	9	9	8	9	5	5
Hispanic	22	12	16	16	11	28	24
White	52	33	32	30	30	32	50
Non-Resident	—	14	11	18	12	4	2
Two/+ Races	4	7	7	6	5	4	5

 

During the decades in which affirmative action and DEI programs have attempted to bring some measure of equal access and equal achievement to educational endeavors, parts of the white community were drifting away. This blind-spot within the academic community’s understanding of social dynamics meant that concepts of relative disadvantage might have fit the situation just as well as ones of privilege and advantage.12

Increased funding in order to include whites in DEI initiatives is a possible solution, although a fundamental rethinking of inclusivity is also called for. Instead, the elimination of services and programs has become a mandate to ensure that no group will be helped to rise out of an undifferentiated mass. If government and higher education are taken out of the picture, social advancement, which always requires additional resources, then hinges solely on the wherewithal of individual families.

The university community, with its emphasis on inclusion and diversity, has represented a last outpost of a kind of thinking—of governmental spending and educational activism—that was once heralded under the label of Keynesianism and dates back to the immediate post-World War II period when everything seemed possible. Like the fate of the white population, society itself has gone through a long-winded period of evolution and transformation despite the tenacity of modes of thought initially generated in previous times.

Because colleges and universities depend so heavily on external funding for research grants and student loans, the political world has laid claim to its governance in ever-aggressive ways. The opening thrust has concentrated on the elite privates—Columbia, UPenn, Harvard, and Princeton among them. The integration of the two worlds of politics and education, in this sense, signals the remaking of higher education into a sphere of government in which the political world functions as its own type of board of directors. While the federal Department of Education is in the process of dissolution, the entire system of higher education is being reduced to the level of a federal department. This is part of an overall effort to curtail civil society and reign in its independence, in which scientists—initially those whose work concentrates on the environment or on global public health issues—have been a major focus.

Perhaps it is in this sense that we can understand the reluctance of university executives to confront directly what at first seemed to be scattershot criticisms aimed at various parts of their enterprises and why they did not push back harder at the assertion that criticism of Israeli policies is a form of antisemitism. It is not just that the higher education community was unprepared for the level and intensity of the criticisms, but that it was so highly vulnerable.

The top-tier institutions are the gonfaloniers of modern times, targets whose capture on the battlefield disorients the troops that follow their lead. To intimidate and diminish the top-tier institutions sends a message to the wider educational community about the punitive actions that non-compliance may bring. It effectively shifts the center of gravity throughout a major portion of society. In the conflict between the government and the educational community that depends on it, the latter can only lose, even if the degree to which it loses is still to be determined. The universities are a highly strategic and, as it turns out, easy target, ideologically and in terms of government expenses.

That the university community has also served as a base and breeding ground for liberal politics is still another reason for its subjugation.13 The overall result gestures in the direction of a shrunken and harshly repressed and repressive educational system that cowers to executive mandates because of the certainty that if not, legislative enactments will follow.14 Highly successful white males are the driving force behind all this. Their goal: a system that encourages no exceptions except for people who mimic themselves.

The world we have known is disappearing, an unraveling that would take considerable time to now reassemble. It is unclear whether and to what degree colleges and universities will remain as sanctuaries for the expression of ideas inconsonant with the political establishment. Perhaps some solace is to be found in this quip by Mother Jones, herself a fierce labor movement advocate at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth centuries. She was heard to say: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

1. Between 1980 and 2022, the major changes were in the white population, which fell from 80 to 59 percent, while the Latine population increased dramatically from 7 to 19 percent. The Black population barely changed—from 12 to 13 percent, and the Asian population increased from 2 to 6 percent. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics–Most Current Digest Tables, 2023, Tables 101.20.
2. Many versions of this poem exist. The version here is unabridged, translated from the original.
3. Alan Blinder, “Trump’s Battles With Colleges Could Change American Culture for a Generation.” The New York Times, March 20, 2025.
4. Cost & Aid | Princeton Admission.
5. Median annual income is just over $80,000 per year. These programs also take into account a family's wealth in property, business assets, etc., in complicated formulas that can mitigate qualifying on income alone. Stephanie Saul, “Harvard Will Make Tuition Free for More Students.” The New York Times, 17 March 2025; Peyton Beverford, Free Tuition for Low-Income Students | Appily. 21 March 2025; US Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2023, 10 September 2024.
6. Unless indicated otherwise, all data is from the US Department of Education, College Scorecard, 23 April 2025. For each institution, see the various listings under: Costs, By Family Income; Financial Aid & Debt; Test Scores and Acceptance; Graduation & Retention; Typical Earnings; Campus Diversity.
7. At Princeton, the median debt for undergraduates when they finish their degrees is $10,320; at Rutgers-New Brunswick, it is $21,500.
8. Share of Federal Pell Grants recipients U.S. 2024 | Statista.
9. The situation a decade ago: “among ‘Ivy-Plus’ colleges (the eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke), more students come from families in the top 1% of the income distribution (14.5%) than the bottom half of the income distribution (13.5%).” Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan, “Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility,” National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23618, July 2017, p. 1.
10. Not listed are: American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Unknown. Numbers do not always equal 100 due to rounding or these absent categories.
11. National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics-Most Current Digest Tables, 2023, Tables 101.20, 306.10 (scroll down for the relevant data—based on 2022 totals, rounded up).
12. In the academic trilogy of race, class, and gender, many scholars sought a means to move the discussion of class from the theoretical, where it received extensive attention, to the concrete so that it could function similarly to the analyses of race and gender. Intersectionality has been one of the results, which nonetheless still leaves class undertheorized on a concrete level.
13. On voting patterns, see: Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins, Polarized Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics. Cambridge University Press: 2024.
14. Isabelle Taft, “How Colleges Are Surveilling Students Now.” The New York Times, March 29, 2025.

Thanks to Jules David Bartkowski, Anne Lopes, and Paul Mattick for comments.

Gary Roth is the author of The Educated Underclass: Students and the Promise of Social Mobility (Pluto Press, 2019).