A recent report, “Separate & Unequal,” released by the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, is introduced with a provocative statement: “The higher education system is more and more complicit as a passive agent in the systematic reproduction of white racial privilege across generations.”

The study goes on to detail ways in which the United States is moving toward an entrenched two-tiered higher education system based on race/ethnicity.

Increasingly, for instance, white students are over-represented at elite institutions and students of color are overrepresented at open-access community and 4-year colleges.

With elite institutions having greater financial resources and much greater spending on instruction, higher completion rates, and higher future earnings of graduates, these pathways are far from equal.

Read more at http://cew.georgetown.edu/separateandunequal/.

Better funding for public higher education could help diminish the negative effects of these trends. See three ideas from CFHE for how to provide better public funding for higher education and better access to quality at http://futureofhighered.org/workingpapers/.