Then there’s the Aid Elimination Provision of the Higher Education Act, a provision that took effect in 2000. It denied financial aid to students with drug convictions. A couple of years after it took effect, the American Civil Liberties Union called the law “unjust and counterproductive” and “both morally wrong and unconstitutional.”

Researchers at Cornell found last year that the provision “had a large negative impact on the college attendance of students with drug convictions” — that students who were affected delayed college enrollment or were made “less likely to ever enroll in college,” among other things.

Add to that the explosion in student loan debt, which has passed the trillion-dollar mark, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Such debt is now held by a record one in five households, said a Pew report last year.

But this debt crisis isn’t evenly distributed. According to a report last year by the Center for American Progress: “African-American and Latino students are especially saddled with student debt, with 81 percent of African-American students and 67 percent of Latino students who earned bachelor’s degrees leaving school with debt. This compares to 64 percent of white students who graduate with debt.”