Bruce Murphy writes that low income students struggle to fund a college education:

“Fifty years after the Supreme Court ruled that black Americans must receive an equal chance at a quality education, a college degree has become the ticket to the middle class. But it is a ticket that poor families – a high percentage of them minorities – often can’t afford.
…Holmes works eight hours a week on campus and another 21 hours a week off campus at a local bank. She’s had to scale back her class load to keep up. She also could take out more loans in order to cut back on work, but that would saddle her with as much as $20,000 in debt by graduation, with years of medical school education yet to finance.”