Class Matters

Affirmative action was never the right answer. In Class Matters, Richard Kahlenberg persuasively shows that a new class-based approach to college admissions can produce economic and racial diversity alike– and greater fairness.

Richard Kahlenberg has been on a lifelong journey to expand social and economic opportunity and provide a much wider group of people the opportunity to have a place at the table. In this highly personal and deeply researched book he dramatically and persuasively illustrates that class should be the determining factor for how a wider group of people gain admittance to higher education and the opportunity to “swim in the river of power”.

While elite universities claim to be on the side of social justice, the dirty secret of higher education in the United States is that the decades-long focus on racial diversity provides cover for an admissions system that mostly benefits the wealthy and shuts out talented working-class students. How to rectify the resulting skyrocketing economic inequality and class antagonism is a question of profound moral and practical importance.

Kahlenberg has long worked with prominent civil rights leaders on housing and school integration, but he made a controversial decision to go over to the “other side” and provide research and testimony that helped lead to the controversial Supreme Court decision of 2023 that ended racial preferences. Ironically, he shows, this decision could actually result in a progressive policy outcome – from one that benefited the upper-middle class to one that helps working-class students. By removing legacy admissions, increasing community college transfers, growing financial aid programs, and recruiting students from underrepresented communities, colleges can create more seats for working-class students, a disproportionate share of whom are Black and Latino.
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