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prosperity, while those without higher education and very often their children are
relegated to a low-wage, dead-end fate.

The principal flaw in this argument is that it ignores the multilayered university system that
has evolved in the United States and offers diverse opportunities to obtain a higher
education. There are literally thousands of colleges in America, including two-year
community colleges, state colleges and universities, religion-based private institutions, and
prestigious Ivy League schools.

However, four-year colleges offer advantages over two-year colleges, and most students
do not attend four-year institutions. Of the roughly four million young people who were of
age to enter college in 2002, only 35 percent actually entered a four-year college.
Furthermore, minorities were much less likely than whites to enroll in college when they
reached the normal age of high school graduation. The relevant figures were 37 percent
for whites, 26 percent for blacks, and 15 percent for Latinos.

It is widely believed that a lack of money is a major impediment to access to higher
education for the poor, and especially for low-income minority students. Certainly it is true
that college is expensive. In 2003, the average tuition, room, and board in public colleges
cost $10,700 a year; the average was over $25,000 for private colleges. However,
financial aid is readily available for deserving students. In the same year, 76 percent of
students in four-year colleges and 89 percent in private colleges received some assistance.
Most of this aid--59 percent in public universities and 82 percent in private institutions--
took the form of outright grants.

The bigger obstacle to college enrollment is not money, but preparation. Richard D.
Kahlenberg, a scholar of American education at the Century Foundation, asserts that
"there's almost no gap between college ready high school graduates and the number of
students starting college. Virtually everyone who is academically qualified to go to college
actually goes to college." However, not everyone is qualified. Studies have shown that
some two-thirds of college-age Americans either do not graduate from high school or do
graduate but lack the basic academic prerequisites for college admission.17 Because the
primary cause of the racial gap in college enrollment is that students are graduating from
high school without being academically prepared for college, the problem is not likely to
be solved until reforms are made in primary and secondary education.

Conclusion

Globalization has widened the gulf between those with skills and education and the
traditional working class, not only in America but around the world. The gap between the
rich and poor has expanded, sometimes by substantial amounts, in Russia, China, and
India, as well as throughout Latin America. The same process has occurred even in Europe.

Economic globalization has also contributed to the decline of the traditional institution of
working-class solidarity and power, the trade union. While the erosion of labor's ability to

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