Wealth-Based Disparities in Higher Education: Compounding Privilege, Multiplying Barriers

Authors

• Rachel Moran, UCLA School of LawFollow
• Jonathan D. Glater

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2026

Journal Title

Social Sciences

ISSN

2076-0760

DOI

10.3390/socsci15040220

Abstract

This Special Issue is prompted by a confluence of developments in higher education: increasing access to postsecondary schooling overall and concurrent increasing socioeconomic inequality. After World War II, American colleges and universities began to “massify,” expanding their enrollments by opening their doors to people who previously would have found them closed. First, these institutions admitted veterans, then people of color and women (Altbach and Reisberg 2018, p. 63; Gumport et al. 1997, p. 2; Labaree 2017, pp. 106–7). The U.S. was not an outlier, and in the ensuing decades, nations around the globe saw unprecedented increases in the number of students pursuing a college degree (Trow 2001, p. 245). This growth in enrollments seemed likely to expand opportunity and potentially to reduce socioeconomic disparities as an increasing share of the population benefited from the financial opportunities associated with higher education. Yet that did not happen. Instead, dramatic increases in access to higher education have coexisted with rising levels of inequality. In fact, the level of wealth inequality among Americans today rivals that seen on the eve of World War II, shortly before the process of massification began (Piketty 2014, p. 76, fig. 1.1). These trends, seemingly in tension, raise intriguing questions. Why and how did massification, reflecting a democratic impulse toward wider accessibility of higher education, occur alongside stratification in higher education, contributing to wealth and income inequality? How did colleges and universities successfully massify, radically expanding overall enrollment and the diffusion of higher education, even as inequality increased? Why did massification fail to disrupt inequality? Did the stratification among colleges and universities, in fact, perpetuate inequality? How did the declining role of public, direct funding of higher education—especially in the U.S.—contribute to these phenomena? To understand these dynamics fully, we must consider the multiple ways in which wealth-based disparities shape higher education, affecting what kind of student enrolls at what kind of institution with what sort of outcome. This Special Issue begins with articles that address access to higher education. Much of the debate over wealth-based disparities in the United States focuses on access, particularly the role of persistent increases in college tuition, rising student debt burdens, and their effects on less affluent students. The cost of getting a degree can seem daunting, prompting low-income students to forego college, postpone their studies, attend college part-time, or even drop out (Sanchez et al. 2024, p. 4). Low-income students who do pursue higher education may attend college burdened by the constant worry of finding themselves homeless or hungry on campus (Broton and Goldrick-Rab 2018, p. 122; Hallett et al. 2019, pp. 8–9). These students may also feel less able to access elite social networks, in which affluence is taken as a given, that confer competitive advantages in employment after completion (Jack 2019, p. 9; Rosales et al. 2024, p. 50). Moreover, wealth-based differences can shape the lives of college students long after graduation. Students dealing with substantial educational debt may be reluctant to take on new financial obligations and so may put off potentially costly life changes, including marriage, parenthood, and homeownership (Jabbari et al. 2023, p. 2; Martinez et al. 2024, p. 9). The challenging questions prompted by the twin phenomena of greater access and increasing inequality do not arise only in the United States. Although there is much to be learned from the American system of higher education, this Special Issue puts those lessons in an international context. Nations around the globe have sought to massify their institutions of higher education (Trow 1999, pp. 315–19). National governments have deployed different strategies to expand enrollment capacity, and these efforts have proceeded at different paces across these different contexts (Pan and Luo 2008, p. 76). Yet, these nations—like the United States—have seen connections between socioeconomic status and educational opportunity (Buckner and Abdelaziz 2023, p. 547; Ilie et al. 2021, p. 1254; Krafft and Alawode 2018, p. 31; Torche 2011, pp. 798–99). Below, we set the stage for this volume’s work by providing a brief overview of the forces shaping access to higher education and briefly examining the trends contributing to rising inequality in the context of increasing access.

First Page

1

Last Page

26

Num Pages

26

Volume Number

15

Issue Number

4

Publisher

MDPI

Rights

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

Recommended Citation

Rachel Moran & Jonathan D. Glater, Wealth-Based Disparities in Higher Education: Compounding Privilege, Multiplying Barriers, 15 Soc. Sci. 1 (2026).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/2432

File Type

PDF