Universities and social mobility

Editorial by Durham Herald-Sun, August 8, 2015.

Carol Folt, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used a prominent forum in the nation’s capital this past week to make a forceful case for keeping top-fight universities like hers accessible to the brightest and best students, regardless of their income.

It’s an important message, one that would seem to be in no need of reiteration, but in the political climate of today, nationally and within our state, it does need to be emphasized again and again.

To be fair, universities merit some of the criticism and concern over mounting costs of tuition.  The cost of college has been rising significantly faster than inflation.  Still, UNC and other institutions have taken that concern to heart and, in our state university system, especially its flagship campus in Chapel Hill, the belt-tightening has been intense.

The legislature’s parsimoniousness in recent sessions – combined, no doubt, with a deep distrust in many quarters of Chapel Hill and its perceived legions of lefties – has left the university struggling to maintain its historic position of high value and relatively low cost.

One aspect that has been threatened has been the university’s widely acclaimed “Carolina Covenant” program, which offers need-based scholarships that ensure that no admitted student will be deterred from attending for purely financial reasons.

Those scholarships, in place for over a decade, have only served to increase the quality of the student body, Folt said in an appearance Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

“I don’t buy into the argument that it reduces quality,” she said.

Volumes of research support the idea that in today’s economy, a college degree is one of the prerequisites for good-paying jobs and a path to financial security. As costs rise, if scholarship aid declines, we’ll accelerate a grim cycle where the sons and daughters of he affluent have an even greater head start in their working lives than the sons and daughter of the less well-off.

Folt cited a “sad statistic” in a recent Brookings Institution study – that “family income is maybe the strongest predictor of graduation rate.”

Far from helping to level the playing field, higher education runs the risk of contributing to the “big sort” in American socio-economic levels.

“I don’t think that low-income students should be put in a less-than-great education” she said. “I think that is completely unfair.”

It certainly is.

Folt’s words should stand as a challenge to our state’s leaders – to all of us – to fight tenaciously against that unfairness.

http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/editorials/x110785281/Universities-and-social-mobility