“Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream” by Suzanne Mettler.

Higher education is no longer the United States' great equalizer.

That's the premise of Suzanne Mettler's new book, “Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream.” Mettler is a professor of government at Cornell University.

Mettler points out that for the lowest-earning Americans, the share of family income required to pay for a public four-year college in 1971 was 42 percent. By 2011 that share skyrocketed to 114 percent.

On Campus talked with Mettler last week, discussing the idea that higher education in America may actually be exacerbating inequality - and what can be done about it. 

Mettler was also responsible for an opinion piece published in The New York Times entitled "College, the Great Unleveler."

Most of us were raised to believe that going to college was the surest path to a better life, but for many today that belief can be perilous. Unless we can claw back polarization and plutocracy enough to restore opportunity in higher education, the United States will become a society in which rank is fixed and our ideal of upward mobility but a memory.