Maybe college is not for everyone, but for the people who go, it can make a huge difference in life trajectories.
Paul Tough, who writes and speaks on education and inequality, sums up the impacts in the book The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us, retitled in more recent editions as The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us (with pandemic-related preface).
We got a hold of the author pre-pandemic to talk about how college can lead to upward mobility, but can still present an obstacle to many students.