“Equality of Opportunity? Never Mind”

“Equality of Opportunity? Never Mind”
by Paul Krugman

"David Firestone catches Mitt Romney denying any public responsibility to help less-fortunate Americans get an education: “It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.” Just the other day, Romney was telling us that he was the true heir of Teddy Roosevelt, because he favored equality of opportunity, not equality of results. His claims about Obama were, of course, completely false; so, it turns out, were his claims about himself.

Just a reminder of how unequal access to higher education already is: low-income students with high test scores are less likely to finish college than high-income students with low test scores:

And Romney proposes making it even more unequal. But hey, he personally made it the hard way, getting through college with no income except from selling the stocks his father gave him.”

- http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

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