Instead of making a case for a more democratic system that would offer all comers access to a high-quality system of universal higher education, the academy’s leaders adopted the individualistic mantra of neo-liberalism. They mouthed platitudes about the common good, while treating a college education as a personal benefit, rather than one that serves society as a whole. The result, as we well know, is the trillions of dollars of debt that blights the futures of so many students, limiting their current options and life chances. Wealthy undergraduates can major in art history; less affluent ones end up in accounting.
Ellen Schrecker, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, 453.