Over the past few years, a number of elite colleges and universities have launched campaigns aimed at providing more financial aid to financially-strapped students. But as Karin Fischer recently reported, "the proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities actually dropped between the 2004-5 and 2006-7 academic years."

Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and longtime advocate of class-based affirmative action, offers an analysis of what factors might explain the apparent anomaly.

The primary reason, according to Kahlenberg, is that aid policies are only part of what drives enrollment. "In order to receive aid, low-income and working class students must first be admitted. Because such students often attend lousy schools, even highly talented and hard working students -- who have tremendous potential -- don't look as good on paper as their more privileged colleagues. Research finds that while colleges and universities give substantial preferences to under-represented minorities (blacks, Latinos and Native Americans) and other groups, they give basically no preference to economically disadvantaged students, despite claims to the contrary."