Lower Ed: How For-Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America

Description

Despite the celebrated history of not-for-profit institutions of higher education, today more than 2 million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges such as ITT Technical Institute, the University of Phoenix, and others. Yet little is known about why for-profits have expanded so quickly and even less about how the power and influence of this big-money industry impact individual lives. Lower Ed, the first book to link the rapid expansion of for-profit degrees to America's increasing inequality, reveals the story of an industry that exploits aspirations.

Tressie McMillan Cottom worked in enrollment at two for-profit colleges. After experiencing the kinds of choices students faced, she left the for-profit educational sector to go study it in graduate school. She is now an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has been a columnist for Slate and an online contributor to the Washington Post and The Atlantic, and is quite fond of Dolly Parton, fancy coffee, brunch, nineties hip-hop, bacon, and the Delta blues. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Praise for Lower Ed: "Cottom does a good job of making the name Lower Ed stick, and she makes a solid case for reviewing the entire system of higher education for openness of opportunity." Kirkus Reviews "In Lower Ed McMillan Cottom is at her very best rigorous, incisive, empathetic, and witty. . . . Her sharp intelligence, throughout, makes this book compelling, unforgettable, and deeply necessary." Roxane Gay, author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist "Lower Ed is brilliant. It is nuanced, carefully argued, and engagingly written. It is a powerful, chilling tale of what happens when profit-driven privatization of a public good latches on to systemic inequality and individual aspirations." Carol Anderson, author of White Rage and professor of African American studies at Emory University "This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the market forces currently transforming higher education. It is an eye-opening portrait of this burgeoning educational sector and the ways in which its rapid expansion is linked to skyrocketing inequality and growing labor precarity in the twenty-first-century United States." Ruth Milkman, past president of the American Sociological Association "In a sea of simplistic and often bombastic critiques of American higher education, Tressie McMillan Cottom's trenchant analysis of Lower Ed stands out. As the Trump administration moves to make life ever easier for the nation's for-profit colleges, this book offers the most powerful form of resistance detailed storytelling of the causes and consequences of this big-money industry. Anyone frustrated with high college prices, student debt, or the diminishing sense of hope surrounding so many communities needs to read this book." Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of Paying the Price and professor of higher education policy at Temple University "With passion, eloquence, and data too, McMillan Cottom charts the harm we are doing to our youth, to higher education, and to democracy itself." Cathy N. Davidson, author of Now You See It and founding director of the Futures Initiative at the City University of New York "[A] profound examination of the role of for-profit colleges in the emerging, 'new' American economic landscape. This is the best book I've read on for-profit (or shareholder) colleges and universities." William A. Darity Jr., professor of economics, public policy, and African American studies at Duke University