The rich are 8 times likelier to graduate college than the poor

CNN reports:

The massive gap in college graduation rates between rich and and poor is growing even wider.

Some 77% of students from wealthy families earned bachelor's degrees by age 24 in 2013, compared to only 9% of those from poor families, a new report has found.

That divide has grown significantly from 1970, when 40% of rich students and 6% of poor ones graduated college, according to the report from The Pell Institute and the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The study defines the wealthy as having family incomes above $108,650, while the poor earned less than $34,160.

Middle class students also lag behind their better-off peers. Those in the middle saw their graduation rates rise to only 26% in 2013, up from 13% in 1970.

This gap in college graduation rates between rich and poor is contributing to the "growing divide between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots,'" the report said.

Maybe Obama could ask his "coalition" partners at Columbia, University of Chicago, Harvard, Standard, and University of California to lower tuition in the name of "fairness".