Last Updated on November 10, 2026 by Karl Thompson
Part of the traditional American Dream is that anyone, even children from low income families, can work their way through college, get a degree and be upwardly mobile.
However, research by the sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab suggests that this is no longer the case – around half of the low-income students in her study left college without a degree, and a major reason was that they simply couldn’t afford to pay the bills.
Goldrick-Rab and her team followed about 3,000 students who entered public colleges and universities in the state of Wisconsin, USA, in autumn 2008, and interviewed 50 of them in depth over six years. Her findings are set out in her book Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream (2016). Some of her main findings include:
- Half of the students left college without a degree.
- Fewer than 20% of the sample managed to complete a degree within five years.
- The experience of university is, for many poor students, quite grim – many struggled to afford food and housing.
- Students did not drop out because of a lack of effort: the main reason was literally not being able to pay the bills.
Goldrick-Rab also argues that there are clear ‘structural’ reasons why poor students cannot afford college:
- Financial assistance (in the form of the federal Pell Grant) is available to students from low-income households, but its purchasing power has declined, so it now covers far less of the cost of college than it used to.
- Job opportunities are insufficient to make up the difference – there are too few jobs, employers offer too few hours and wages are too low – so many poor students simply can’t earn enough to pay the rent or for food.
Goldrick-Rab concludes that low-income American families are being sold a ‘myth’ – the myth of the American Dream that it is possible to be upwardly mobile by working your way through college – when for half of poor students attempting to do so the result is no degree and a lot of debt. They thus have an expectation which is not going to be met.
However, many families and students feel that it is their fault if they fail to complete, and feel a sense of guilt and shame if they do so.
Goldrick-Rab hopes that her research will act as a wake-up call, alerting people to the statistical fact that you only have about a 50-50 chance of getting a degree if you’re poor.
She rounds off by suggesting a policy solution – to make the first two years of college free. When the book was published in 2016 she was hopeful that politicians would take up policies like this.
Applications/ Relevance
- This is a great piece of research which encourages people to develop a sociological imagination – translating private troubles into public issues.
- This is yet more evidence that material deprivation is responsible for social class differences in educational achievement.
- It adds weight to the argument that America is a ‘less developed country’ – poor, hardworking people have opportunities blocked – if they try to rise up they face hunger and housing insecurity.
- It challenges the idea that the education system is meritocratic: effort and ability aren’t enough if you can’t afford to stay in college.
- It also ties in nicely with other research on how the experience of university varies with your social class background. For the UK figures, see my post on social class and educational achievement statistics.
Sources
- This post is based on a summary of this Thinking Allowed Podcast in which the author of the research is interviewed.
- To take it further – you might like to read the whole book – Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream (Goldrick-Rab, 2016).
This material is relevant to the sociology of education.
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