In 2055 education will be very different. The cost of going to college will be extremely high, as trends have shown increasing costs.(1.) In more recent years the costs of public colleges increasing faster than private colleges. This along with the fact that socioeconomic status has much more weight in determining college acceptance(2,3), will have a big effect on the future social structure of our society. In 2055 the society will be very much a class system, there is a gap growing between the rich and the middle class and the poor.(4) In 2005 executives take home almost 500 times as much money as the average worker. All in all the total amount of money controlled by the bottom 80% of society has remained very low, today it is at 17%, in 2055 that number will be lower. The cost of public college is going up, partially because local governments will not be able to pay for them because of recession in the economy(5,6).

Kids with high school or college educated parents have a better chance of applying to college. Kids with rich parents also have a better chance of applying to college.(2) Also people who go to college make substantially more than people who don�t. It is almost always necessary to have a degree or MBA from a very prestigious college to make a lot of money.(3) So if we take this cause and effect relationship recursively, we find that people who go to prestigious colleges get very rich, and then their kids can go to very prestigious colleges. So in 50 years of our education system being like a distillation facility, what will society be like?

In 2055, there will be a very large income disparity. The rich will be richer and the poor will be the same. There will be more tension between the groups because of such situations where expensive public colleges begin to cause problems even for the middle class.