Higher Education is a reflection of AMerica as a whole.

In America, as Forbes has informed us, the top 400 wealthiest among us have assets equal to the bottom 150,000,000.
In higher education, too, the top universities keep getting richer, while the rest of the private sector faces ever-deeping tuition discounts and in many cases a struggle to stay in business.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/21/rich-universities-get-richer-are-poor-students-being-left-behind

As each year the American middle class gets a bit smaller and poorer, so too do the prospects for the private colleges and universities they attend look more dismal.

A recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicates  that the greatest enrollment decline is in the community college and for-profit sectors with only a modest decline at the non-profit privates.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/even-private-colleges-feel-the-pain-as-enrollment-drops-again/98839

What this story fails to capture is the ever-deeping discount rates on private college tuitions with most at 50% or even higher.

What these trend bode for democracy in this country is anybody's guess.  Senator Rand Polls struggle in the Senate to kill the data-gathering pieces of the Patriot Act is highly commendable.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rand-paul-takes-to-senate-floor-to-block-nsa-surveillance-measure/ar-BBk1BpK?ocid=ansnewsmtns11

But unless the widening rift between the wealthy and the rest of us is narrowed, civl liberties may be a theoretical fact but a practical chimera, no matter how successful Paul's efforts are.  Poor people quite simply have a tough time securing their rights, regardless of how clearly they are spelled out in constitutions.  Dozens of under-developed countries have proven that point.

Unless higher education is secured as a civil rights, our civil liberties could lie in the balance.

http://terrortrials.blogspot.com/2013/11/higher-education-as-civil-right.html