Over the past decade and after the Supreme Court decision ending race-conscious admissions, the use of legacy preferences declined significantly, with one notable exception: "elite" institutions.

Being female or a person of color has long been seen as a disadvantage in hiring and promotion. A new study of college professors shows that class may loom as large.

There are been several recent dismaying articles about the chaos and confusion about student loans in the wake of major changes from the "Big Beautiful Bill" and rushed implementation from the Departm...

The working class isn't just White men in hard hats anymore. A crop of women candidates may be the ones who can earn their votes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an opinion piece on the invisibility of social class in the college curriculum. Colleges Teach Gender and Race. They Ignore Class was written by th...

The Education Department gathers a massive tranche of civil rights data about public school students. It's now available but harder to parse than in the past.

The student debt crisis won’t be solved by repayment plans alone. Experts say affordable college, stronger financial aid, and debt cancellation are key.

Article: Social Class Differences in Parenting? Revisiting Classed Childrearing through a Video-Ethnography of Mealtime | Sociological Science | Posted August 25, 2026

Fifteen schools now charge six figures per year for the total cost of attendance; others are on the verge.

I just finished Kashana Cauley's The Playback and recommend it highly as a serious, sobering, and funny romp through a fictional (perhaps near) future in which the public is so indifferent to heavy-ha...

Last week, the Economic Hardship Project and the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences program at Columbia University released a new report: Recognition Without Representation: Working Class in ...

Higher education’s admissions hierarchy is also a spending hierarchy. The students who arrive with the most advantages often receive the most resources.

We know that being deep in student debt means more than simply managing monthly payments. Daniel Collier at the University of Memphis has created a fascinating website to explore how complex "more" ma...

I read so often about the importance of students' sense of "belonging" in college, and yet just this week, I've also read about multiple states choosing precarious special funding models for supports ...

A mixed-methods portrait of student debt.

In 2023, Texas changed how community colleges would be funded. Instead of the state sending money for the number of students enrolled, campuses would instead get paid for success with students: House...

Defaults across the U.S. reached record counts as borrowers have struggled to keep up after a yearslong payment pause.

Civil rights advocates say the change, which deals with disparate impact, removes a crucial tool for discovering possible violations of federal law. Conservatives argue statistics alone cannot prove a policy is discriminatory.

When I was an undergraduate, I did volunteer work with a remarkable 2nd grade teacher in an elementary school in a working-class neighborhood. The year before, the children had noticed that traffic o...

Americans' confidence in higher education fell to 38% in 2026, per Lumina-Gallup. Cost, campus politics, and AI's threat to degrees drive doubts.

I've spent a lot of time in the past few weeks listening to political discourse about social class. There has been yet another news cycle of wealthy [male] consultants recruiting someone that they bel...

ianca Baldridge’s new book describes the hopes, dreams, and fears of Black youth workers, whose dedication is challenged by tough working conditions. Baldr

State funding and policy have fallen short, advocates say, and the consequences are not confined to your backyard.

For a fair and comprehensive overview of the SAT admissions exam, take a look at Smithsonian Magazine's recent article on the 100-year history, the current state of research, and the cyclical policy d...

If I were in charge, I'd have a session during first-year orientation in which I challenged all the students to ponder this graph of parental investment expenditures per child by income level: In tha...

The dismantling of the Department of Education continues apace.

I listen closely to campus messaging for what first-generation college students learn about themselves via available support programming. These programs do, of course, offer explanations for why stude...

We're tracking federal education funding that Trump's federal budget office has stalled.

I was just mindlessly scrolling in line at the hardware store when I learned about admissions readers penalizing low-income students more often for using AI/Large Language Models (LLMs) when they writ...

We're tracking federal education funding that Trump's federal budget office has stalled.

Among the good news that application rates are up now that the FAFSA revisions are complete is the sobering news that completion rates among students in mixed-status families dropped by more than 3000...

There is a school district in Arizona that served only 9 students last year. There are only three houses in the district that can be taxed to fund these schools. But an energy pipeline running through...

College access advocates say the decline is due to fear of how the Trump administration may use student data and misinformation about available aid.

Does your child’s PTA raise $1 million or $0? New data shows how parent fundraising continues to exacerbate inequities in NYC public school classrooms.