ABSTRACT
Most Americans still believe in the myth that higher education promotes social mobility and allows people to move up the economic ladder. This chapter argues that low-income students tend to go to low-funded community colleges with low graduation rates, while high-income students tend to go to wealthy universities with high graduation rates. The promotion of for-profit corporate welfare has been a mostly bipartisan affair and supports many of the myths that circulate around financial aid. First, it turns out that a lot of the federal aid for higher education goes to for-profit and private colleges and universities. In other words, the private collectors act as judge and jury, and they use the power of the national government to garnish wages and public benefits. Once again, financial aid plays a role in this process because the federal government subsidizes work-study jobs, and colleges profit from paying low wages to their student workers.
