• Small man on campus Small man on campus In the debate over diversity in higher education, one fact is easily overlooked. The most underrepresented group of kids on campus isn’t minority students. It’s poor kids. There is no affirmative
• Small man on campus
Small man on campus
In the debate over diversity in higher education, one fact is easily overlooked. The most underrepresented group of kids on campus isn’t minority students. It’s poor kids. There is no affirmative action for them.
A new Century Foundation study details the phenomenon. It ranked students by socioeconomic status, a measure of family income, parents’ education and occupation. It found that students from the bottom quarter of the economic scale make up only 3 percent of the student body at 146 highly selective colleges in the United States. Only 10 percent came from families in the bottom half. Seventy-four percent came from families within the top quarter.
There are four times as many African-American and Hispanic kids on such campuses as kids from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Nearly twice as many colleges recruit minorities as low-income kids. Costs are a big part of the reason. Poor kids glance at tuition costs and figure they haven’t got a chance. To a large extent, unfortunately, they’re right. Colleges have changed the way they award financial aid, shifting away from economic need toward other things, such as academic achievement.
Most federal and state aid is still based on income. But as the Century Foundation study found, poverty now ranks below minority status and athletic ability, and well below academic talent, on the pecking order for college scholarships.
Cold economics is the reason. Colleges, like any business, need money to operate. They must attract a number of students who can pay the full freight, or close to it. There’s lots of competition for those lucky kids.
To attract them, colleges are upping the ante, offering prestige, small classes, top professors, well-stocked libraries, comfy dorms, swim-up snack bars at the campus swimming pool and lots of other nice things.
Those cost a lot. The more poor kids admitted on big scholarships, the less money the college has to spend on things that attract the better-off.
Schools must also boost their rankings in college guides and magazines, especially U.S. News & World Report. To do that, they must admit students with high grades and test scores.
Suppose that a college admissions officer has $100,000 in scholarships to give away, and that tuition is $20,000 a year. He can offer full scholarships to five poor, deserving students. If they attend, they’ll pay nothing to the school.
Now suppose the admissions officer decides instead to give $5,000 scholarships to 20 middle-class applicants with high grades and test scores. If they take the bribe – er, scholarship – they’ll pay a total of $300,000 in tuition a year. They’ll also raise the school’s standing in college rankings. Guess who gets the scholarships?
That’s not to say that a nonminority poor student won’t get a very cheap ride now and then. But he or she will have to have a marvelous academic record – or be a whiz with a soccer ball or basketball.
It would be easy to urge colleges to give a break to low-income students, both in admissions and financial aid. That’s just what the Century Foundation study recommends. In fact, the University of California – which plans to increase fees by 25 percent to 30 percent – may do something similar. The UC system, under enormous financial pressure as a result of the state’s budget crisis, is considering imposing a tuition surcharge on students from affluent families in order to hold down tuition for others. “What good is quality if we are closing people out?” asked Ward Connerly, a University of California system regent. “We are going to end up being an elite institution.”
Don’t expect that approach to catch on. Affluent families can send their students elsewhere if quality drops or the price rises. Tweaking the consciences of college presidents might bring small adjustments, but college budgets restrict generosity.
So the answer lies, in part, with government. A low-income kid in St. Louis can still work his way through community college and the University of Missouri at St. Louis. The same is true for a working commuter student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
But both states this year slashed aid to higher education. In response, the University of Missouri increased tuition by an astounding 20 percent. Such schools are the last best hope for smart, but not affluent, kids hoping for a shot at the middle class. Such schools must be kept affordable.
That means finding more money for state higher education. That means thinking the unthinkable in Missouri: tax increase.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
