The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown US higher education into disarray, left the survival of some colleges in doubt, and brought to the surface the dangers of our nation’s growing inequality and political polarization. In The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America, authors Anthony P. Carnevale, Peter Schmidt, and Jeff Strohl explore how higher education got into this vulnerable position in the first place: by encouraging a bifurcated system that lavishes attention on mostly wealthy White students, while giving far fewer resources to everyone else.

The Merit Myth notes that 60 to 70 percent of the growth in earnings gaps since the 1980s is tied to differences in access to and completion of college programs with labor-market value. The education gap between White, Black/African American,  and Hispanic/Latino individuals means that White individuals are most likely to benefit from the college earnings premium—44 percent of White workers hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared to 30 percent of Black/African American workers and 20 percent of Hispanic/Latino workers. Moreover, only 19 percent of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students with high SAT scores go to selective institutions, compared to 31 percent of White students with similar scores.