How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality

Mark Thoma writes that there is Bad news for those who propose education as the solution to inequality as Tim Taylor decribes How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality.

The effects of these patterns on inequality of incomes in the United States are clearcut: higher income families are better able to provide financial and other kinds of support for their children, both as they grow up, and when it comes time to attend college, and when it comes time to find a job after college. In this way, higher education has become a central part part of the process by which high-income families can seek to assure that their children are more likely to have high incomes, too.

And in Australia, the idea of equal access to higher education has eroded away to a phantom. I was the beneficiary of free university education. Now, young people now longer have the same opportunities as my generation did.

The higher education sector is now seen as a major export driver as students from developing countries are stripped of their families' hard earned cash and given dubious qualifications. This is part of Australia's version of imperialism.