The Founders of this country (and many other political leaders over the years) have argued that a robust system of public education is essential to the health of our democracy and the welfare of our citizens. In recent decades, there have been numerous reasons to worry about the K–12 education provided to students—especially less affluent students—in many areas of our country. But Americans generally believe that our colleges and universities are the best in the world.

In Degrees of Inequality, Suzanne Mettler argues that we should also be concerned about higher education. She does not deny the quality of the education provided in the very best institutions, but concentrates on the hugely segmented character of our system of higher education. Mettler shows how our variegated system—with several species of private and public, nonprofit and for-profit universities—delivers very uneven results for students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. She argues that the major villain in this case is our plutocratic, polarized political system.

The polarization of contemporary American politics is evident to all observers. Mettler does not provide citations for the bold claim that this country is becoming a “plutocracy.” However, readers of this journal will be familiar with several recent essays in which political scientists, including Larry Bartels, Martin Gilens, Benjamin Page, and Jeffrey Winters, ^{Footnote 1} have argued that our cherished democracy is becoming an oligarchy or even a plutocracy, “the rule of the rich.” ^{Footnote 2} Mettler puts these two points together to show how reform is regularly thwarted in Washington, both by the difficulty of forming working coalitions and by the power of vested interests.

The author also blames what she calls the “policyscape,” policies enacted in previous decades. Higher-ed policies that worked well in the past may not now serve their intended purposes. An obvious example is the failure of Pell Grants to keep up with inflation. Numerous laws have also had unintended consequences. In the dysfunctional climate she describes, it is very difficult to update or repair existing policies.

One of Mettler’s clearest examples is the student aid system, including both student loans and tuition tax breaks. These plans were designed to increase access for low-income students. Instead, they often reward “rent seeking” by for-profit universities, and may prompt increases in tuition from heavily strapped public universities. The plans also channel federal money to those who need it least, including high-income students who would attend college anyway and wealthy for-profit universities.

Mettler documents the astonishing levels of wealth of for-profit universities, the salaries they pay their presidents, and the monies spent on advertising and lobbying, along with the disastrously poor quality of the education and low levels of graduation and job choice. Stiff regulations might help deal with this, but passing tougher regulations is very difficult today.

One of the author’s most interesting arguments is that in our polarized political environment, reform policies that do command bipartisan support are likely to be enacted hastily and without sufficient deliberative oversight (p. 160). This haste sets up further problems in the future. Some of the “reforms” have created as many problems as they solved.

All of these points bear pondering. Yet there are other issues at stake that are not part of Mettler’s story. She pays very little attention to online education, a phenomenon of growing importance that surely complicates the picture. Furthermore, the antipathy to regulation that she describes is not limited to greedy for-profit universities. It has become a part of our political culture for many Americans. This antipathy has been fueled in part by failures of governance, introducing a vicious cycle as opposition to regulation makes it even harder to govern well.

Mettler shows that a majority of Americans voice support for higher education. Given this broad popular support, she implies that the unwillingness of our political leaders to improve the system must be due to the lobbying of selfish educational bureaucrats and greedy for-profit institutions. However, the widespread cynicism about government, as well as a resistance to any increase in taxation in our country today, means that popular support is highly unlikely to be translated into any effective change, regardless of what the “plutocrats” may do. Large majorities may express support for higher education, but the support is shallow, and these sentiments rarely lead to improvement in the system, given the general disinclination to allow any tax increases.

Thus, the “power of the plutocrats” is not the only problem that our country faces in reforming higher education. The increasingly narrow focus on personal aggrandizement and the lack of concern or sense of responsibility for others in their community—especially if dealing with the problem would cost money—is at the root of the problem. In his recent book Our Kids, Robert Putnam makes this case with powerful conviction and ample evidence. ^{Footnote 3}

As the plutocratic tendencies in our republic make abundantly clear, money talks. Yet the unwillingness to spend money for purposes of public good is equally salient. Money talks: but so does the absence of money for public systems of higher education, and community colleges especially. Institutions that can call on the loyalty of wealthy donors rely more and more on raising private funds. Those who cannot do so raise tuition, increase the size of classes, increase enrollment, and hire large numbers of adjunct faculty. Lower graduation rates and a diminished education inevitably follow.

Several well-endowed private colleges and universities have made significant grant aid available to poor families, and so attendance there is now less expensive than any public alternative. But only a small number of institutions can afford to take this step. Moreover, the daunting “sticker price” and history of past exclusion make it unlikely that many poor families will learn about this aid. And the tiny percentage of applicants admitted by such institutions means that even fewer will ever be able to take advantage of the policy.

Mettler has done a real service in showing how higher education, which most people might assume is exempt from the plutocratic features of our political system, is right in the thick of it. She shows how higher education is intricately caught up in the thorny problems with our government and our political culture: a populace increasingly unconcerned with the public good and fiercely partisan representatives unresponsive to the preferences of “ordinary citizens.” Insofar as education, from the time of Franklin and Jefferson to the present day, has been the best hope for improving the quality of citizenship in this country and making the “American dream” accessible to all, this is an especially disturbing finding.