Income inequality is almost certain to be a central issue in the upcoming federal election. While parties may disagree on the importance of rising inequality and what they should do in response, one policy has near universal support. Indeed, it has become somewhat of a motherhood statement to say that we should address the problem of inequality in general, and the fate of the middle class in particular, by spending more on education.On the face of it, this seems obvious. More educational opportunities would open access to good paying jobs for lower-income individuals and affect inequality in a very direct way. Also, each person who gets more education is one less person competing for jobs with other less educated workers and one more person competing for high-paid jobs with more educated workers. As a result, the earnings gap between more-and-less educated workers is likely to be reduced. Education provides other benefits as well. More educated societies tend to have higher productivity, better health outcomes and greater democratic engagement. This is why spending more on education is considered by many to be a silver bullet.Given the way our system works, however, there is every reason to believe that broad-based spending increases in education wouldn¹t reduce inequality in the short- to medium-term, and may make it worse.For education policy, as in so many things, the devil is in the details. To understand its impact, we need to look at its three main components.First, there is spending on university education. We know that family income is strongly related to university attendance: children from families with incomes over $100,000 are much more likely to go to university than children from families with incomes under $30,000. If this difference was simply because lower-income families can¹t afford to send their children to university then we could close this gap by lowering tuition, improving access to RESPs and opening more seats in universities. But several studies indicate that while affordability is part of the problem, much of the gap arises due to differences in academic preparation and because high- and low-income families value education very differently. Under these conditions, lowering tuition and opening more seats would benefit middle- and upper-income families much more than lower-income families. In other words, it would actually increase inequality.Affordability is less of an issue with the second component - college and apprenticeship programs