My own personal view is that all people of faith should help people make more of their lives: to prosper in faith, friendship and love. Sadly, the sector I work in — higher education — has done a bad job in its part of that, especially with students from poor backgrounds.
This piece from the New York Times outlines some of the issues. The real problem is fairly simple: it just costs too much to get a college degree. Higher education’s answer, as costs have escalated, has been to provide more need-based financial aid to the poor. That answer is inadequate because, as the Times piece points out, the college completion gap between rich and poor has been growing, even with all the financial aid.
Financial aid isn’t the answer. To a large degree it’s the problem. Try this thought experiment with me: Suppose the government said everybody had to eat a lot of apples. Suppose further that it said apples are so important that we’ll give you payment to help cover the cost when apple prices go up. Do you think apple producers would keep their prices low? Of course not!
Well, in higher education, we now have the government saying people really should go to college, and providing payments to help pay when colleges raise their prices. The colleges have not restrained their price increases, but instead have taken advantage of the fact that they can raise them even more when the government is helping people pay.
I would like to live in a country where bright but poor students get a good, fair shot at a college education. Unfortunately, we are farther from this ideal today than when I first entered the field. We have to do better.