In this excellent article in the New York Times about the plight of community colleges, Ginia Bellafante shows the dramatic disparity in fund-raising between community colleges and other sectors of American education. The wealthiest benefactors and philanthropists shower millions on their alma mater, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but the alumni of community colleges are unlikely to be billionaires. The hedge funders shower millions on charter schools, but ignore community colleges, which serve twice as many students but are not as chic as charter schools.


And yet which institution is there for the least affluent members of our society? Which institutions offer a ladder into the middle class for children of poverty?


Bellafante’s article begins:














LaGuardia’s biggest challenge is the fact that it does not have a rich alumni base. Its graduates are working-class and middle-class.






Recently, foundations like Gates and Lumina have directed some giving to community colleges, but it is  only a small fraction of what they give to higher education.


The story recounts the donors who were attracted to LaGuardia’s mission of serving the neediest students and the strategies they devised to jumpstart fund-raising.


As I read this story, I was reminded of something I heard in Finland, where all higher education is tuition-free. “Even graduate school?” I asked. My friend and guide, Pasi Sahlberg answered, “Education is a basic human right. We Finns don’t believe that people should have to pay for a basic human right.”