Now that the media has latched onto Obama’s focus on income inequality, we can expect a lot more pieces like this one from Jon Marcus.

This is CNN.

Obama seeking to help poor students, but policies favor the rich: opinion

A White House push to increase the college enrollment of low-income students comes as universities and government policies are increasingly favoring high-income over low-income students.

Students from the poorest families are less than half as likely as those from the wealthiest families to get bachelor’s degrees by the time they’re 25, a statistic cited by the Obama administration as a reason why 140 heads of universities and advocacy groups were invited to unveil ideas aimed at increasing the number of low-income students who enroll in and graduate from college.

These include waiving the application fees, working with primary and secondary schools to better prepare them for college, providing more scholarships in science- and technology-related fields, and connecting them with adult mentors and advisors.

All of these things have been proven in pilot programs to increase college attendance and graduation rates among students from the nation’s poorest families.

“We don’t want these to be the exceptions,” President Barack Obama told the college leaders and others on Thursday. “We want these to be the rule.”

However, university interests are conflicting with White House goals and the one essential incentive to get students to go to college — money, in the form of financial aid — has been slowly shifting to wealthier families, not low-income ones.

At the same time, more aid is going to students who don’t need it: Since 1995, the percentage of students who received financial aid based on need remained flat at around 43%, while those who received aid but did not demonstrate a financial need for it has nearly doubled to 42%, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Federal figures also show that students from families that earn at least $100,000 a year get an average of $10,200 in financial aid, significantly more than the $8,000 that goes to students from families that earn less than $20,000.