Follow me in a brief mental journey. Transport yourselves to Morningside Heights in the late 1940s or early 1950s. You have just arrived at the gates of Columbia University flanked by your excited kin, who probably congratulate you repeatedly for being the first in the family to attend an institution of higher learning. Just how, you may ask, did you land in this metropolis when your parents have always disposed of meager means?
Your benefactor was not a tremendous academic transcript, a unique set of (expensive) extracurricular activities, or a (counselor-revised) exemplary essay. Your plight was addressed by the collective will of a society that saw value in the empowerment of those citizens left behind by the shocks of an unstable world. For over thirty years this philosophy guided American educational policy. Despite the fact that tertiary education was not a requisite for a comfortable life, the United States sought to provide it nonetheless to the median, the humble and the needy. From Congress’ G.I. Bill of 1944, to the Higher Education Act of 1965, to the establishment of the (once) very generous Pell Grants in 1972, America set its efforts on molding a workforce prepared to confront the systemic rigors of a capitalist market.
The present, however, is not nearly as bright as the past.
