The Equity Trap – James Andrews

In 2002, the US Census Bureau published a report showing that college graduates earned nearly $1 million more over a lifetime than high school graduates—a gap approaching $2 million in 2025 dollars. The widely cited report reframed inequality as a credentials gap. If more people earned degrees, the logic went, wage gaps would close.

But correlation isn’t causation. The data didn’t prove that degrees caused higher earnings—only that degree holders tended to earn more. Still, the message stuck: underserved groups held fewer degrees, so policymakers assumed the solution was to remove barriers to college.

The harder path—improving K–12 academic preparation—would have required sustained investment in curriculum, teacher quality, and school accountability. Instead, leaders chose the shortcut: eliminate placement tests, ban remedial courses, and expand access by mandate. It was easier to legislate and more politically attractive. But it didn’t build capability. It just lowered the bar.

What this logic missed was how college creates value in the first place. Institutions don’t conjure skills out of thin air—they select for readiness and refine it through competition and academic rigor. Admissions standards exist to match students with programs they’re prepared to complete. Remove those filters, and the meaning of the credential collapses.

In 2009, President Barack Obama declared that “every American will need to get more than a high school diploma … by 2020.” College completion became a civic obligation and a macroeconomic strategy. If credentials alone created prosperity, we could solve inequality with a printing press. But degrees don’t create skills—they signal them. And when standards collapse, the signal fades. So does public trust. 

Removing placement tests didn’t eliminate academic screening—it just delayed it. Students hit barriers in coursework instead of admissions. Those aiming for high-value degrees were quietly diverted when they couldn’t keep up.

In fields like business, engineering, and health sciences, the first required math course often assumes years of preparation. At San José State University, for example, business majors must complete Business Calculus, which requires precalculus, which requires college algebra. For a student who hasn’t mastered Algebra II in high school, that’s a three-course ladder they can’t climb.

Engineering is even more demanding. Calculus I is the entry point—and it defeats many students who passed AP Calculus in high school. Success in these courses isn’t about cramming. It’s about a decade of structured math—long nights at the kitchen table, mastering foundations from elementary school onward.

Students who can’t keep pace in high-demand majors aren’t dismissed. They’re redirected into fields with lower expectations and weaker economic returns. Engineering becomes business. Business becomes psychology, communications, or justice studies. Institutions call it “flexibility.” But the outcome is the same: students land in programs with minimal quantitative demand and limited economic payoff.

Telling every student they can be whatever they want, regardless of academic record, isn’t guidance. It’s false hope disguised as empowerment.

Research confirms this shift disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic students: after California Assembly Bill 705 effectively eliminated remedial courses, they were more likely to be routed into SLAM (statistics and quantitative reasoning) rather than BSTEM (algebra and calculus) pathways—regardless of academic preparation—suggesting a new form of racialized tracking under the banner of equity.

One of the most influential studies driving this trend—Jo Boaler’s “Railside” project—claimed that de-tracked, collaborative math instruction improved outcomes for low-income students. It was widely cited and helped justify the elimination of eighth-grade Algebra I in California. But when independent researchers identified the school and examined public data, the reported gains vanished. Standardized test scores and college readiness outcomes didn’t improve. The lesson is stark: when feel-good pedagogy replaces real preparation, students are told they’re succeeding—right up until they hit the wall. 

We see the pattern in degree production. Between 2001 and 2022, annual bachelor’s degree awards rose by roughly 770,000—representing a nearly 40% increase relative to the US population. Low-return majors surged: psychology degrees rose 76%, criminal justice 126%, and interdisciplinary studies 194%. These fields are easy to scale, light on math, and often disconnected from clear career pathways. This surge wasn’t driven by student choice—it was institutional triage. Faced with waves of underprepared students, colleges expanded programs unlikely to screen them out.

The belief that every American should earn a bachelor’s degree was a costly mistake. Four years of college is expensive—not just in tuition, but in lost wages and delayed entry into productive work. And most jobs in the economy don’t require it.

The bachelor’s degree was designed for pursuits that demand sustained intellectual training—law, medicine, engineering, and education, for example. It rewards abstract reasoning, structured inquiry, and disciplinary depth. That model has real value—but only when such cognitive demands are central to the task. Not every domain of human activity calls for this kind of formal abstraction, just as not every person is built to lift their body weight in the heat or crawl through a 36-inch coal seam. Recognizing differences in skills and abilities contributes to specialization—something Adam Smith, in 1776, identified as essential to the wealth of nations.

So why try to universalize it? Not because the labor market demanded it, but because the politics of inequality did. As credentialed professionals pulled ahead and working-class wages stagnated, policymakers embraced a seductive narrative: if degrees equal earnings, then more degrees must mean more mobility.

Rather than address structural inequality directly, they offered a workaround: “learn to code.” At a 2014 White House event, President Obama urged students, “Don’t just play on your phone—program it.” It sounded empowering. But it blurred the line between cultural aspiration and practical workforce preparation.

The Hour of Code didn’t rebuild the trades or close wage gaps. It dressed inequality in borrowed tuition and vague tech dreams. Most jobs in America still rely on applied skill, not theory. Training, not abstraction. There’s nothing wrong with saying college isn’t for everyone. What’s wrong is pretending it is—and calling that equity. 

We didn’t just lower the bar—we raised expectations and sold students a story. Young people are the unwitting pawns in a larger political script. They’re told the “good people” have secured their seat at the table—and if they pull up a chair, economic mobility awaits. Just work hard.

But what they aren’t told is that the system doesn’t bend to support them—it bends to preserve itself. When students fall short in high-demand majors, they aren’t expelled. They’re taught a lesson in bait and switch. Colleges steer them into programs with lower academic demands and weaker labor market alignment. The institution meets its enrollment targets. If students refuse to switch majors, they drop out—no degree, plenty of debt—only to realize too late they weren’t prepared. Either way, the result is the same: a system that avoids accountability while the student shoulders all the risk.

At San José State University, roughly 27% of bachelor’s degrees are awarded in these low-math, low-ROI fields. These aren’t pipelines to professional careers. They’re pressure valves—used to keep students enrolled after hitting academic obstacles.

Most students don’t choose these majors out of passion. They choose them because they were redirected—and no one told them the economic tradeoffs. The tuition is the same. The time is the same. But the return is radically lower. This is not guidance. It’s enrollment management. And it’s funded by students who believed they were preparing for their futures.

Survey after survey confirms that students attend college for economic mobility. Steering them into debt-financed credentials with limited value isn’t equity—it’s a betrayal of the public trust. Higher education has a solemn mission. It should elevate students, not quietly reroute them to protect enrollment targets.

Real equity doesn’t require lowering expectations. It requires telling the truth. Even Mad Magazine understood the problem back in 1975.

The great philosopher Tom Koch wrote of guidance counselors:

Most counselors take pride in their Vocational Guidance techniques, which consist of signing you up for all the courses you’ll ever need to launch a career that you don’t want and they don’t understand. But even after you’ve taken every course and graduated with every honor, a Guidance Counselor is seldom ever able to find you a job as a New York Disc Jockey or a Hollywood Talent Scout or a Boston Symphony Conductor. More likely, his Placement Service will offer you work as a Super Market Box Boy or a Steel Mill Furnace Stoker or a Shepherd (Mad Magazine #175, June 1975).

That was satire from my old comic book collection, but for many students today, it’s reality.

Students deserve honest, structured, and data-grounded guidance. This isn’t ancillary—it’s a core function of public education. Programs must disclose entrance requirements, academic demands, graduation rates, and labor market outcomes. But real equity requires more than transparency—it requires honesty. Students need a clear-eyed assessment of where, how, and whether they fit before investing years and debt. That might mean being told college isn’t the right path for them—or it might reveal where they’re a great match. There’s no shortage of meaningful work in this country. What’s missing is the guidance to help students find their place in it.

Advising should be anchored in objective data: curriculum catalogs, NCES and Scorecard outcomes, and Department of Labor wage statistics. Placement must reflect demonstrated readiness—not race, zip code, or inflated transcripts. Passion matters, but it must be matched with preparation. Telling every student they can be whatever they want, regardless of academic record, isn’t guidance. It’s false hope disguised as empowerment.

Technology makes bias-resistant, transparent guidance possible. All that’s missing is the leadership to make it real. Pretending all majors are equally accessible and equally valuable isn’t guidance—it’s misdirection. 

Higher education was never designed to prepare students for every job in the economy. Its value lies in preparing students for fields that genuinely require deep academic preparation—and in being honest when that preparation is lacking. Turning college into a universal credentialing system is a fool’s errand: it dilutes purpose and erodes credibility.

Rather than making college the goal, our education system’s mission should be to prepare students for a rewarding adult life. That might mean technical training, on-the-job experience, or, for some, bachelor’s degrees.

A just system doesn’t sort by race, wealth, or prestige. It aligns knowledge, skills, and abilities with opportunity—and respects every path that leads to productive work. But in the name of equity, we lowered standards to raise degree totals. The result wasn’t mobility—it was misdirection. Unprepared students were steered into college full of hope, only to land in majors with low academic demands and limited value.

Preparation and selectivity weren’t obstacles to justice—they were its foundation. Real equity doesn’t mean rerouting ambition into academic dead ends. It means telling students the truth, honoring all forms of work, and making sure that when a degree is awarded, it actually means something.