The Nation - News from Jan. 19, 1988

Poverty is increasing in the United States and unless educators work to halt its spread, an “explosive” two-tier system could develop, an official of the nation’s largest private pension fund said. Clifton Wharton, chairman of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Assn. and the College Retirement Equities Fund, said the nation’s colleges and universities should commit facilities, intellectual talents and research to the issue of poverty. The United States is becoming a two-tier nation “with the same potential for explosive conflict between the haves and haves-not within our own borders that once alarmed us elsewhere around the globe,” Wharton said at the 70th annual meeting of The American Council on Education.