Introduction / Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein -- Economic inequality in college access, matriculation, and graduation / Robert Haveman and Kathryn Wilson -- Overcoming educational inequality : improving secondary education linkages with broad access postsecondary education / Michael...

We describe changes over time in inequality in postsecondary education using nearly seventy years of data from the U.S. Census and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. We find growing gaps between children from high- and low-income families in college entry, persistence, and...

Non-financial barriers to college are an important possible explanation for socioeconomic, racial, gender, and other gaps in college access and success. A sizeable economic literature documents policy efforts to understand and address these barriers. We review this literature on non-financial...

It is commonly supposed that colleges help to reduce inequality by providing paths for individuals to rise beyond modest origins. Reviewing evidence from more than 1,000 colleges, elite and not, the author argues that baccalaureate education's power to reduce inequality has actually declined,...

We describe changes over time in inequality in postsecondary education using nearly seventy years of data from the U.S. Census and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. We find growing gaps between children from high- and low-income families in college entry, persistence, and...