It’s hard to dispute the importance of education.
Many claim that having a robust education system is the key to improving a nation’s overall quality of life. Liberal Arts institutions in particular have long demonstrated their ability to prepare the next generation to challenge power structures that oppress and exploit the meek.
Just this month, President Biden signed an executive order that marked a major step in addressing some of the structural faults of the US education system. The legislation prioritized the academic success of Latinx people by targeting barriers that hinder their access to higher learning, among other things.
Where would we be without the equitable academic success of marginalized groups?
We’d probably have a lot less people making “good trouble,” as Dr. King once put it. Moreover, the United States is not a post-racial society. Colorblindness kills, and white supremacy has persisted because individuals—some of whom are our leaders—continuously fail to recognize the deleterious outcomes of the prevailing system.
Moving forward, the US government will need to invest in higher education so that it is more accessible.
‘Serious inequities’
It’s crystal clear that the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill in Congress would provide a number of higher education investments, many of which would benefit people of color who have struggled to access US colleges and universities, if passed.
According to the Center for American Progress (CAP), blacks and Hispanics also have had a harder time getting the most out of college. This is because both groups are “much less likely to graduate,” and “have less money to spend on offering a quality education.”
“Even more importantly, an equitable society would allow students of every racial, ethnic, and socio-economic background to flourish in the field they find most rewarding,” - CJ Libassi
Academic equity can flourish under the right conditions; CAP outlined some of these back in 2018:
Include racial equity measures in federal accountability structures
Create a federal student-level data system to track outcomes by race
Use state-level data to monitor the issue of equity gaps in college completion
Unfortunately, the Build Back Better agenda doesn’t include each and every one of these provisions. What the bill does do, however, is bolster funding for historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), tribal colleges and universities (TCU) and minority-serving institutions (MSI).
At the very least, the budget reconciliation bill is a step in the right direction.
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