Not so many overstuffed minivans pull up to freshman dorms to begin the school year anymore. A gaze on McCormick Road this August revealed an increasing number of Jaguars, Land Rovers, and luxury cars dropping off their increasingly more affluent first-year Wahoos. Most had out-of-state plates. While the parable is merely illustrative, statistics back this trend. When 69 percent of out-of-state students at the University do not even receive loans, let alone grants, middle-class students are disappearing from college campuses.
This alarming trend calls for an urgent look at what lofty tuition rates and plummeting government support for public education are doing to the social makeup of the United States.
A Chronicle of Higher Education survey found 82 percent of Americans agreeing that "It is very difficult for a middle-class family to afford a college education."("Colleges Bring Better Lives
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