Higher education sorts students by race into tax-favored and untaxed tiers

Evidence

To understand the link between tax policy and higher education, it’s helpful to think of the whole secondary-education industry as a pyramid. At the top, you’ll find the most selective four-year colleges, both public (meaning state-supported, like the University of California system) and private (meaning self-funded through tuition and gifts). These are all nonprofit institutions receiving associated tax breaks. They also all have a predominantly white student population and admit the fewest applicants. … At the bottom, you’ll find for-profit schools. They receive no tax breaks, relying almost exclusively on tuition to cover operating costs. They admit virtually all applicants and have the highest percentage of black students. But as we’ll see, without the tax breaks nonprofits receive, for-profits have to operate like businesses. And when businesses focus on the bottom line, their customers—in this case, a predominantly black student population—fall prey to profit-maximizing decisions. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 260

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the pyramid structure and its racial sorting, clarifying how the nonprofit tax exemption maps onto who attends which tier.
• SEED: The image of a racialized education pyramid subsidized by tax policy at its top could anchor an essay or op-ed explaining four tax provisions.