<p>From a 2006 article by the Education Trust:
"We Americans have long been dedicated to the idea that hard work should pay off — that even those from the most humble origins should be able to work their way to the top. </p>
<p>That still happens, of course. Antonio Villaraigosa, the high school dropout from a poor Latino family in East Los Angeles who went on to graduate from UCLA and is now mayor of the second largest city in America.... We repeat these stories over and over.</p>
<p>But ... this kind of upward mobility happens far less often than most of us realize. Today, we not only have less mobility than we did 20 years ago, but we also have less than in most other developed countries. Indeed, there is now less economic mobility in the United States than in France, Germany, Denmark, and a whole host of other European nations. ...</p>
<p>Why...? Principally because of education – or more precisely, the lack thereof...</p>
<p>President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the 89th Congress made a solemn promise to America’s young people in 1965. “Tell them,” said the President, “that the leadership of your country believes it is the obligation of your Nation to provide and permit and assist every child born in these borders to receive all the education that he can take.”</p>
<p>But over the past few decades, we’ve gradually abandoned that promise, and along with it the promise of far too many of our children. ....Today, our highest-achieving low-income students actuallygo directly on to college at rates about the same as our lowest-achieving students from wealthy families....</p>
<p>And indeed, there were robust increases in grant aid — up 68 percent from 1985 to 1995 and 51 percent from 1995 to 2005 7 — that were almost commensurate with increases in tuition and fees.</p>
<p>But along the way, something very important changed. Instead of focusing those increases on students who absolutely needed additional funding to attend college, the biggest increases went to more affluent students who could afford to attend college without such financial support. How did this happen? It happened because all of the key players in student financial aid -- the federal government, state governments and institutions themselves — increased the proportion of their aid dollars going to non need-based aid....</p>
<p>Historically, the federal government’s principle vehicle for providing college access to low-income students has been the Pell Grant. Created in 1972 as the Basic Education Opportunity Grant (BEOG), the Pell Grant program has enabled millions of students from low-income families to attend twoandfour-year colleges.</p>
<p>But investments in this program, while up, have not kept pace either with college costs or with rising demand for college. In 1975, the maximum Pell Grant covered approximately 84 percent of the cost of attending a public college or university. Today, it covers only 36 percent, effectively blocking access for thousands of aspiring college students from lowincome families.....</p>
<p>In four-year private colleges and universities:
• In 1995, the average student from a family with income below $20,000 received $3,446 in institutional aid, while the student from a familyabove $100,000 received $1,359 in assistance.</p>
<p>• Just eight years later, the average low-income student award had increased by 52 percent to $5,240, while the average award to students from families with incomes over $100,000 increased by
254 percent to $4,806...."</p>
<p>You can read the whole report by going here and then clicking the link in the third paragraph: <a href="http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:QlEE000LGC4J:wunc.org/voices/considering-college/facts-about-access-to-higher-education+u.s.+percent+%22go+to+college%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us%5B/url%5D">http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:QlEE000LGC4J:wunc.org/voices/considering-college/facts-about-access-to-higher-education+u.s.+percent+%22go+to+college%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us</a></p>