Higher education should be closing the gap between the rich and the poor. But college economics are driving them further apart
In fact, schools are already moving away from a more equitable system. Colleges actively recruit “full pay” students who can attend and will not need financial aid. A 2011 survey by Inside Higher Ed found that about 35 percent of admissions directors at 4-year institutions, particularly public colleges, had increased their efforts to target “full pay” students. Far from wanting to enroll more low-income students, colleges recruit more affluent ones who will pay full price to attend.
As someone who attended a public college, this pisses me off.
$178,000 Is a Lot for a Pig, but This Pig Is Paying for College (New York Times)
Inevitably, the auctions turn out better for the animals’ owners than for the animals themselves. Three days after the auction, Kipper was put in a trailer and driven to a meat science laboratory at Texas A & M University, where he was slaughtered and placed in a cooler. Once his drug test results come in, Kipper will be butchered, boxed and, along with 66 other top-ranking barrows, donated to charity. The four couples who bought Kipper will each receive a 54-pound gourmet pork package.
The last time Mr. Leach saw Kipper was at the arena, in his pen on champions’ row the day of the auction. Some of the livestock show’s committees call the arena’s back loading dock, where exhibitors aged 8 to 18 say goodbye to their animals, the trail of tears. “It was one of the hardest things to do, to leave him in his pen,” Mr. Leach said, standing by the dirt and hay in Kipper’s empty stall back in Haskell. “I miss him. I really do. I miss just kind of knowing that he knows you’re there, and you know he’s there.”
This is the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
