Public research universities were previously able to provide excellent education to white families thanks to healthy government funding. However, that funding has all but dried up in recent decades as historically underrepresented students have gained greater access, and now less prestigious public universities face major economic challenges.

In Broke, Laura T. Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen examine virtually all aspects of campus life to show how the new economic order in public universities, particularly at two campuses in the renowned University of California system, affects students. For most of the twentieth century, they show, less affluent families of color paid with their taxes for wealthy white students to attend universities where their own offspring were not welcome. That changed as a subset of public research universities, some quite old, opted for a “new” approach, making racially and economically marginalized youth the lifeblood of the university. These new universities, however, have been particularly hard hit by austerity. To survive, they’ve had to adapt, finding new ways to secure funding and trim costs—but ultimately it’s their students who pay the price, in decreased services and inadequate infrastructure.
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The rise of new universities is a reminder that a world-class education for all is possible. Broke shows us how far we are from that ideal and sets out a path for how we could get there.

Laura T. Hamilton is professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced. She is coauthor of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality and author of Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College and Beyond. Kelly Nielsen is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Merced.
 

Introduction

The Changing Face of the UC

1. Battle with the Rankings
2. P3 Paradise
3. Running Political Cover

Responses to Underfunding

4. Austerity Administration
5. Tolerable Suboptimization

Dealing in Diversity

6. Student Labor and Centers of Support 
with Veronica Lerma

7. Marketing Diversity

Breaking the Cycle
 
Acknowledgments
Methodological Appendix: On Being White and Studying Race
Notes
References
Index