Can higher education serve everyone who wants to learn, or has it become a system designed to preserve prestige? What happens when the barriers to entry are not intellectual but bureaucratic? And what would it take to build a system where access, not exclusion, defines success?

Taylor Odle is an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also a faculty affiliate in Data Science, the Institute for Research on Poverty, and the Institute for Diversity Science. His research sits at the intersection of education policy, economics, and data science, using quantitative methods and large-scale data to study how policies shape students’ access to and success in higher education. Taylor’s work has become central to understanding how states, systems, and institutions can equitably support students as they transition to and through college.

In this episode, Taylor and I unpack how inequality is built directly into the structure of higher education itself. We discuss the myth that access to college has been “solved,” and explore how the application process—letters, essays, fees, and credentials—continues to privilege those who already have financial, cultural, and social capital. Taylor explains how policies meant to open doors often end up reinforcing the same hierarchies they aim to dismantle, and why even community colleges, intended to be open to all, have unnecessary barriers that keep learners out.

Our conversation moves from the philosophy of access to the data behind inequality, from the meaning of equity to the commodification of prestige in higher education. Taylor challenges the assumption that everyone must go to college, arguing instead that education should be available to all who want it without gatekeeping or unnecessary cost. Together, we imagine a system where higher education is not a privilege to be earned, but a public good to be shared—one that values learning for its own sake and redefines success as participation, not exclusion.