A new report by Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation documents the high prices poorer undergraduates are asked to pay at colleges, even as the same schools offer discounts for children of wealthier families to lure them to enroll.
"'With their relentless pursuit of prestige and revenue,' Burd writes, 'the nation's public and private four-year colleges and universities are in danger of shutting down what has long been a pathway to the middle class for low-income and working-class students.'" …
"'…it's more profitable for schools to provide four scholarships of $5,000 each to induce affluent students who will be able to pay the balance than it is to provide a single $20,000 grant to one low-income student.'" …
"There's nothing inherently wrong with handing out tuition breaks to the middle class, or even the rich. The problem is that it seems to be happening at the expense of the poor. At 89 percent of the 479 private colleges Burd examined, students from families earning less than $30,000 a year were charged an average 'net price' of more than $10,000 annually…"
How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich (The Atlantic)