Human Rights, Capital, or Capabilities? Narrowing Race and Income Gaps in Educational Opportunity

The author presents an understanding of how human capital and human rights have influenced educational policies and the persistence of inequitable opportunities for students. As an alternative approach, human capabilities, an emerging concept of basic liberties, provides an alternative theory for building human capital that can inform academic and social advocacy for reducing gaps in fairness in opportunities to attain a higher education. The author introduces four frames for decoding assumptions used in political rationales for higher education policies, programs, and funding. These frames are used to examine how six states adapted to shifts in federal policy on educational standards and high loans. When policy assumptions are decoded, a human capabilities lens can help find remedies to inequalities in state system markets.