“What we’re really seeing is a targeted effort by the GOP to not just attack education, but working-class students’ access to it.”
Bias is sometimes about intent, sometimes about outcomes. They're not the same.
“I knew that I had come from this very dark place — I was abhorrent to society,” said Michelle Jones, a Ph.D. candidate at N.Y.U. who was released from prison in August after serving 20 years. “But for 20 years, I’ve tried to do right, because I was still interested in the world, and because I didn’t believe my past made me somehow cosmically un-educatable forever.”
After budget cuts gutted prison higher-ed programs, Cheryl Wilkins demanded the chance to learn behind bars. Now she’s making sure others get the same life-changing opportunity.
In Georgia, undocumented students are barred from the state’s top public schools. Together, students and professors decided to start a freedom school to help fill the academic void. By consensus, the group chose the name Freedom University. It recalled the activism of the past, and, on T-shirts, it also made for a gratifying taunt: “F.U. Georgia.”
Despite the tax breaks and the flood of cash to Wall Street, many of the universities that benefit from the subsidies have refused to use their additional endowment resources to expand enrollment, admit more low-income students or lower their tuition rates.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren speak on legislation they are introducing to make public universities and colleges tuition-free.
“If the Professor Watchlist were a research paper, I’d give it an F,” says Peter Dreier.
The closure of ITT Tech should be a warning to other educational institutions looking to make a dime at the expense of students.
Not long ago, public colleges were debt free and that public investment paid great public returns. Tuition and student debt have tripled over the last generation, and racism has a lot to do with it.
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