The dream of public higher education in America is to provide opportunity for many and to offer transformative help to American communities and the economy.

Patricia Gándara is Professor of Education at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos and the editor of The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform, both also published by SUNY Press.

Gary Orfield is Professor of Education and Social Policy at Harvard University and has published many books, including Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis.

Catherine L. Horn is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies at the University of Houston and the coeditor (with Gary Orfield and Patricia Marin) of Higher Education and the Color Line: College Access, Racial Equity, and Social Change.