This is very disheartening, and reinforces what some experts are beginning to say: That low-income college students need bigger financial aid packages over their entire four years, because they can't fall back on their families for help. Add to the that the social isolation suffered when poor kids can't keep up with the clothing and electronic gadgets their well-to-do peers have, and you're looking at a two-tiered education system:

Angelica, a daughter of a struggling Mexican immigrant, was headed to Emory University. Bianca enrolled in community college, and Melissa left for Texas State University, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s alma mater.

“It felt like we were taking off, from one life to another,” Melissa said. “It felt like, ‘Here we go!’ ”

Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic inequality. Not one of them has a four-year degree. Only one is still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica, who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston furniture store.

Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school added complications. With little guidance from family or school officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety net.

The story of their lost footing is also the story of something larger — the growing role that education plays in preserving class divisions. Poor students have long trailed affluent peers in school performance, but from grade-school tests to college completion, the gaps are growing. With school success and earning prospects ever more entwined, the consequences carry far: education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying them.

“Everyone wants to think of education as an equalizer — the place where upward mobility gets started,” said Greg J. Duncan, an economist at the University of California, Irvine. “But on virtually every measure we have, the gaps between high- and low-income kids are widening. It’s very disheartening.”

The growing role of class in academic success has taken experts by surprise since it follows decades of equal opportunity efforts and counters racial trends, where differences have narrowed. It adds to fears over recent evidence suggesting that low-income Americans have lower chances of upward mobility than counterparts in Canada and Western Europe.

Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees, according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.

While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead.

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California is such a beautiful place to live, especially if you come from the East Coast like I do, but this land-o-plenty has been devastated by Governor Schwarnegger's leadership and a Republican minority that can veto anything.

Proposing a budget that would eliminate the state's welfare-to-work program and most child care for the poor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday outlined a stark vision of a California that would sharply limit aid to some of its poorest and neediest citizens.

His $83.4-billion plan would also freeze funding for local schools, further cut state workers' pay and take away 60% of state money for local mental health programs. State parks and higher education are among the few areas the governor's proposal would spare.

The proposal, which would not raise taxes, also relies on $3.4 billion in help from Washington — roughly half of what the governor sought earlier this year — to help close a budget gap now estimated at $19.1 billion. Billions more would be saved through accounting moves and fund shifts.

"California no longer has low-hanging fruits," said Schwarzenegger at an afternoon news conference in Sacramento. "I now have no choice but to … call for elimination of some very important programs."

Elimination of CalWorks, the state's main welfare program, would affect 1.3 million people, including about 1 million children. The program, which requires recipients to eventually have jobs, gives families an average $500 a month. Ending those payments would save the state $1.6 billion, the administration said. It would also make California the only state not to offer a welfare-to-work program for low-income families with children.

Lawmakers rejected previous attempts by the governor to eliminate the program.

Families would also lose state-subsidized day care under the governor's proposal; about 142,000 low-income children would be affected. That would save the state $1.2 billion. Preschool and after-school care would remain in place, as would some federally subsidized day care.

Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal is a starting point for negotiations that typically stretch well into the summer. His previous attempts to eliminate landmark state services have been upended by lawmakers who nevertheless agreed to substantial cuts last year. Their alternatives are limited, however; their tens of billions of dollars in temporary tax hikes and program cuts in recent years failed to end the state's chronic budget problems.

The governor blamed legislative inaction for the deep wound to state services. He said if controls on state spending that he has long sought were in place, the budget gap would be much smaller. He also accused the Legislature of failing to move quickly to rein in spending after he called an emergency session of the Assembly and Senate in January for that purpose.

The Democrats who control the Legislature noted that Schwarzenegger vetoed measures they approved earlier this year to address a piece of the deficit. Voters twice rejected the spending controls the governor seeks.

Democratic leaders immediately vowed to reject the governor's plans and craft alternatives, which they said could include new taxes on oil companies as well as the abolition of some corporate tax breaks.

"I am disappointed that the governor has chosen to surrender," said Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), "that he proposes a budget that kills the economy and harms so many. … We will not be a party to devastating children and families."

Outside the governor's news conference, scores of union workers shouted, "Shame on you."

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers, who hold enough votes to block tax increases and budgets, embraced the governor's approach.

The State of the Union speech is normally just a big kabuki theatre exercise. On both sides of the aisle, political parties make clear what they value and show their support or lack thereof for the President's agenda.

No news there. But I think in these days where the political spectrum has been so skewed that tea-baggers actually think Hitler was a liberal, it's a good idea to know just what the GOP does not support, like:

Assistance and tax credits for small businesses to create new jobs:

Or ending tax breaks for companies that send American jobs overseas:

Student loans and helping Americans get higher education:

Prohibiting foreign money from influencing our elections:

Nice to see where small business, education and oligarchy play into the GOP's values, isn't it?

The high cost of higher education was always the major flaw in the "retraining" argument they so like to toss around the Beltway cocktail circuit. Even when people want to go back to school, they can't easily afford it. (I can't tell you how many people I know had to scrape together last-minute loans this September when their kids' financial aid or work-study jobs were suddenly cut.)

Soon, no one except the very rich will be able to go to college - and that's the way Republicans seem to like it. We can go back to those great days of Horatio Alger, when poor but deserving lads were taken under the wing of a wealthy benefactor:

Colleges are expecting a sharp increase in financial aid requests next year because of rising unemployment, declining home values, and the scarcity of private loans. (Government-backed loans are expected to be widely available.)

"We're not agonizing over the endowment losses," said Bob Brown, president of Boston University, which froze hiring and imposed a moratorium on all new construction projects in October. "All of our anxiety is around our students, and their financial ability to attend. That's an absolutely fundamental shift from the past few years."

At Wellesley College, finance officials have been tinkering with projection models by adjusting for unemployment rates and other economic variables to estimate student financial need.

"It's a major unknown and a major concern," Andrew B. Evans, the college's treasurer and vice president for finance, said of potential aid requests. "But you can't assume the norm in this environment. You have to adjust."

What many colleges are assuming, Evans said, is that hard times will not pass soon.

The Agonist:

What do you do when there are not enough laissez-fare loving, personal responsibility professing and family values fundies at your university? You make it more socialist:

The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.

Conservatism, when socialism is too good for anyone but yourself!

Hello, everybody, Steven of The Opinion Mill here. It's been quite a week filling in for Mike on this Blog Roundup thing, and frankly I'm getting a little misty-eyed at the thought that it will soon be over. After Saturday, I'll be opening a good bottle of red and sipping it slowly while a recording of John Dowland's "Flow, My Tears" plays in the background. Meanwhile, if you want to join this here party, send your favors to steve[dot]theopinionmill[at]gmail[dot]com, where all will be seen and all will be heard.

Dear Phyllis Schlafly: Next time you want to start hurling accusations about higher education, take a remedial English class first.

He may have been good enough for the Nobel Prize committee, but Bishop Desmond Tutu is persona non grata at Minnesota's Universiity of St. Thomas.

If the burghers and the Bible-bangers are deserting the Republican Party, does that mean we're seeing the end of an era? Rick Perlstein isn't sure.

Michigan Republicans are trying to silence Ambassador Batshit J. Crazee! Oliver Willis says: Let this true conservative voice be heard . And we say: And then get it on YouTube as fast as possible.

That's not a little lost puppy, that's a Republican presidential hopeful. And he's not such a puppy, either. Not all that little, either.

HOLY CRAP: This charming inspirational story of how a good Christian couple raised their son in the grace of God's love and guidance will have you running to lock the doors whenever you hear a church bell toll. But never fear -- here's a religious pantheon we can all get behind.

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy: Thank you Bob Woodward, and the rest of the media cheerleaders who helped smooth the way for BU$HCOS disastrous war of whim.

Donkephant: The Baker report is just more lip service while BU$HCO stalls for time...

CorrenteWire: Trent Lott, sex machine

Hullabaloo: Faith-based Boy Genius

Grist: What's the real cost of climate change, and where do all those numbers come from?

Informed Comment; Arrest Warrant For Harith al-Dhari of AMS; Higher education abductees tortured; Militias capture 14 Western security guards

(h/t HuffPo)

Thank God there's at least one senator who is speaking sense:

The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food.And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Go read the entire article, it's well worth your time.

Oligarchy is really the only way to describe this. The Republican platform benefits such a small percentage of Americans. And that's the way they prefer it. Social programs are democratizing and give voice to the unwashed masses, which only get in the way of the elite. That's why there's been a systematic dismantling of social programs since Reagan.

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