Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Whether you are a kindergarten teacher, an admissions counselor, or a college professor, working in education is a lot like being a priest. You shepherd people’s collective faith in themselves and their trust in social institutions.

Lower Ed encompasses all credential expansion that leverages our faith in education without challenging its market imperatives and that preserves the status quo of race, class, and gender inequalities in education and work. When we offer more credentials in lieu of a stronger social contract, it is Lower Ed. When we ask for social insurance and get workforce training, it is Lower Ed. When we ask for justice and get “opportunity,” it is Lower

At heart, higher education is a means both of redressing socioeconomic inequality and of perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities in new guises.

When systemic failures can be predicted and there exists a public response but political actors instead incentivize market solutions, a negative social insurance program results.