More than 13,000 Colorado residents have earned more than 70 college credits at four-year state universities in the past five years but stopped short of a degree. Now, a new Colorado law lets universities award associate degrees to those students.

Advocates of the program believe it could open up new pathways for universities to bring those students back to finish their bachelor’s degrees. And the state has set aside $51 million to help them do it.

Affirmative action has been a veil obscuring the truth about American higher education, writes journalist and author Adam Harris in his new book, "The State Must Provide." It has never been that hard to see through, for those who tried, but removing it could force the nation at large to recognize the disparities in our system—and to search for better mechanisms to make college equitable.

Harris says one way to make a real difference would be to support the institutions that Black students have historically attended, and that still produce an outsize share of Black professionals.