For students today, only 10 percent of children from working-class families graduate from college by the age of 24 as compared to 58 percent of upper-middle-class and wealthy families.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Middle class families are struggling to send their sons and daughters to school. For many Americans, a college education is essential to future success.
Currently, only 70 percent of our high school students earn diplomas with their peers, and less than one-third of our high school students graduate prepared for success in a four-year college.
In the 1940s, about 20% of people in the U.S. had graduated from high school, but less than 5% continued their education to get bachelors' degrees or higher.
It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.
I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college.
Although children are only 24 percent of the population, they're 100 percent of our future and we cannot afford to provide any child with a substandard education.
I have a serious concern about middle-class families being able to afford college.
And yet 50 percent of the kids who start high school in the United States today do not finish high school.
Some kids win the lottery at birth; far too many don't - and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults.
I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.
No opposing quotes found.