ABSTRACT
In the wake of the Great Recession, a national conversation about inequality and social mobility began. President Barack Obama (2013) declared that economic inequity was the “defining challenge of our age” and made a commitment to using the rest of his term in office to reducing inequality and improving upward mobility. First Lady Michelle Obama and the president announced initiatives to help control college costs and expand higher education opportunities for low-income students. While this desire to increase access aligns with the democratic values of U.S. higher education, it is sometimes at odds with its meritocratic values. Supreme Court decisions indicate a weakening of the social contract based on distributive justice and the rise of a contract based primarily on merit.
