Maureen Lane

Unequal College Access and Its Getting Worse

In a nut shell: a person's access to higher education is becoming more and more unequal as a new report by the Education Trust points out. They are right when they say "That is bad for low-income and minority families and bad for America."

The report, Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunites, highlights two huge problems in achieving equality of access to higher education: college costs and student retention. The cost of four-year college has increased over the last twenty years faster than inflation or the family income. Funding impacts the number of low-income students going to college. If you are from a high-income family you have a 75% chance of getting a bachelor's degree by age 24; low-income fewer than 9% chance of a bachelor's by 24.

At Welfare Rights Initiative students try gallantly to juggle school and several low wage jobs. Right now as the semester is winding down and students need to be current with course work, we have students scrambling just to pass classes in which they were previously getting A's till long hours at work-study, internships and part-time jobs caught up to them.

Our students are poor and low-income and have frequently reported being told in high school they were not college material or that they should try for a two-year college first. The report brings to light the importance of access to four-year college because it increases your likelihood of getting a bachelor's degree. Students starting at a two-year college attain bachelor's degrees at a 30% lower rate.

Tuitions have gone up nationally. Here in New York, the latest word is SUNY (State University of New York) will increase another 4% this year. This is continuing a trend SUNY has of increasing tuition more than other states. College financial aid has not leveled the field for poor and low-income students and its actually getting worse. For example, in 1975 the federal Pell grant (federal need -based college grants) covered about 84% of the cost of going to college. Today, Pell covers only 36% of the cost. As I wrote last week, between 1995 and 2003 universities decreased funding for families making $20,000 a year or less by 13% and increased financial aid for families making $100,000 or more by 406%..

At the same time, federal funds for non-need based student aid (ie merit aid) are currently 52% of federal expenditures. That is to say, more federal money for middle and high-income and less for low-income students. This trend is mirrored in the state and by the finasncial aid choices of the colleges themselves.

Often private and public colleges disburse work-study and other grant money in ways to garner the largest number of their preferred population (students who don't cost them as much money). The schools game the aid system by giving small amounts of money to upper-middle class students - amounts so small that they wouldn't impact the better-off kids much anyway. All of those tiny grants could have been put together to help fund lower income students that couldn't go to school at all without the financial aid. Harvard offers free tuition to students from families making less that $60.000 a year but what about all the students who qualify for college but can't get in to Harvard?

Why is any of this bad for America? What does it matter if there is a growing economic divide?
Economist might answer that colleges are the incubators of the innovators that are needed for our economy to expand. Political scientist may point to the urgency of growing a strong civil society with an evermore informed and educated public. Social scientist may say college is important for social mobility in the histroy of our country's development.

Here at WRI, we say that access to education for all is an important systemic change in which we all have a stake.
Let's keep talking about this important issue.

Maureen Lane: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 7:09 AM, Nov 30, 2006 in Education
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