Economic and Social Mobility

What if the true measure of a university’s success isn’t graduation, but generational wealth?

In Economic and Social Mobility: Redefining Higher Education for Generational Wealth, Hakim J. Lucas challenges the long-held promise that a college degree automatically leads to opportunity. At a time when student debt has surpassed $1.7 trillion and many graduates struggle to build lasting financial stability, Lucas argues that higher education has been measuring the wrong outcomes. Instead of focusing solely on retention and graduation, he calls for institutions to embrace “living goals” such as home ownership, entrepreneurship, investment participation, stable employment, insurance security, and lifelong institutional support. Drawing on the social determinants of health, Lucas introduces the groundbreaking Economic and Social Mobility (ESM) framework and outlines nine determinants of generational wealth. By positioning Historically Black Colleges and Universities as powerful examples and proposing six new institutional metrics, Lucas offers a transformative roadmap that shifts the conversation from credentialism to long-term prosperity.

This book is ideal for higher education leaders, policymakers, researchers, social mobility advocates, and anyone interested in the future of equity, opportunity, and generational wealth in American higher education.

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Learning objectives
• 1 Social determinants of health and the turn to wealth
  • The gradient that changed everything
  • The social determinants of health: The full framework
    • The biology of inequality
  • Structural racism and the health–wealth nexus
    • COVID-19 as the unveiling
  • The turn to wealth: Why income is not enough
    • Intergenerational transfer: The engine of the gap
  • Higher education’s missed opportunity
  • From causes to solutions: Establishing ESM
• 2 The nine determinants of generational wealth: Beyond the paycheck
  • Determinant 1: Education
  • Determinant 2: Homeownership
  • Determinant 3: Automobile acquisition
  • Determinant 4: Health insurance
  • Determinant 5: Life insurance
  • Determinant 6: LLC or business ownership
  • Determinant 7: Investment accounts
  • Determinant 8: Stable employment
  • Determinant 9: Lifelong support
  • The determinants as a system
• 3 Redefining the language of success
  • Words create worlds
  • What current metrics actually measure
  • The six new ESM metrics
    • 1. Wealth Acquisition Index (WAI)
    • 2. Living Goals Attainment Score (LGAS)
    • 3. Generational Impact Measure (GIM)
    • 4. Community Integration Rate (CIR)
    • 5. Debt-to-Wealth Ratio (DWR)
    • 6. Institutional Mobility Score (IMS)
  • The balanced scorecard for generational wealth
  • Objections and responses
    • Objection 1: “Universities cannot be held responsible for life outcomes”
    • Objection 2: “This is social work, not education”
    • Objection 3: “The data is too hard to collect”
    • Objection 4: “This will disadvantage under-resourced institutions”
  • From vocabulary to vision
• 4 Capitalism and federalism: The American contradiction
  • The contradiction
  • The correspondence principle
  • Capitalism as barrier: Market failures and exclusion
  • Capitalism as enabler: Markets, entrepreneurship, and ESM
  • Federalism and the uneven geography of opportunity
  • Debt as bondage
  • The global context
  • Navigating the contradictions
• 5 HBCUs as engines of economic and social mobility
  • Born for this
  • The historical mission
  • HBCUs and Black male success
  • The STEM pipeline
  • The support infrastructure
  • The paradox of invisibility
  • Case studies in ESM practice
  • From practice to framework
• 6 Knowledge-for-living goals: The new value proposition
  • The credential is not the outcome
  • The credentialist trap
  • Financial literacy as general education
  • Co-curricular pathways: From engagement to empowerment
  • Curriculum models: What knowledge-for-living goals looks like
    • Model 1: The integrated general education core
    • Model 2: The ESM certificate program
    • Model 3: The MSI innovation model
  • The new value proposition
• 7 Poverty, policy, and pathways to wealth
  • The betrayal
  • The financial aid crisis
  • Accreditation misalignment
  • Federal and state funding disparities
  • Policy reforms: The ESM agenda
    • Reform 1: Redesign student aid to reward wealth outcomes
    • Reform 2: Align accreditation with living goals
    • Reform 3: Federal incentives for ESM-aligned institutions
    • Reform 4: Income-based repayment tied to wealth milestones
    • Reform 5: Place-based interventions informed by the Opportunity Atlas
  • International comparisons
  • Closing: Vision without policy is fantasy
• 8 The economics of redemption: From debt to wealth
  • Redemption as a category
  • Debt as bondage: A five thousand year history
  • The racial architecture of debt
  • HBCUs as models of institutional redemption
  • Practical strategies: The economics of converting debt to wealth
    • Strategy 1: University-sponsored emergency loan funds
    • Strategy 2: Matched savings programs and Children’s Savings Accounts
    • Strategy 3: Institutional homeownership pipelines
    • Strategy 4: Alumni insurance cooperatives
    • Strategy 5: Entrepreneurship microloan funds
  • The redemptive arc
• 9 Measuring ESM in action
  • What gets measured gets built
  • The four perspectives in full
    • Perspective 1: Financial—WAI and DWR
    • Perspective 2: Stakeholder—LGAS and CIR
    • Perspective 3: Internal process
    • Perspective 4: Learning and growth—GIM and IMS
  • Data infrastructure: Building the institutional capacity to measure
  • Institutional dashboards: Making the scorecard actionable
  • Implementation challenges
    • Challenge 1: Institutional will
    • Challenge 2: Data collection
    • Challenge 3: Political resistance
    • Challenge 4: Equity in measurement
  • Accountability as liberation
• 10 The American Dream reimagined
  • Whose dream?
  • The dream that failed
  • ESM and the dream redefined
  • Vision 2050
  • A letter to the next generation
  • The call to action
  • The dream as construction
• Conclusion: Toward the university of the future
  • What this book has argued
  • The university of the future
  • A final call
  • Not survival, but thriving
• Recommended projects, assignments, and discussion questions
• References
• Recommended further reading
• Index

Hakim J. Lucas is President of Virginia Union University, CEO of Virginia Union University Enterprises, and a tenured historian leading the Economic and Social Mobility (ESM) framework to advance opportunity and equity through HBCUs.