Did You Know?
- The college-enrollment gap between black and white students is wider than ever.
- Smart kids from low-income families earn degrees less often than rich kids who are low achievers.
- Colleges award more grant aid to wealthy students than to low-income students.
- The black-white enrollment gap among students who enrolled in college for the first time has grown over the past 35 years, from 5 points in 1972 to 14 points in 2007. (Source: NCES, Digest of Education Statistics, 2008)
- Our highest achieving poor kids now earn college degrees at rates below our lowest achieving rich kids. “Eight years after graduating from high school, 74 percent of top performers from high-income families had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. But among top performers from low-income families, only 29 percent had obtained at least a bachelor’s degree--exactly one point below the 30 percent bachelor’s completion rate for well-to-do students in the lowest quartile of math performance.”
--"Opportunity Adrift: Our Flagship Universities Are Straying From Their Public Mission." (Source: Baum, Sandy and Jennifer Ma. “Education Pays.” College Board, 2007.)
- Of the $1.9 billion that public research-extensive universities dispense in grant aid, about the same amount goes to students from families in the top two income quintiles (families earning over $80,400) as to students from families in the bottom two income quintiles (families earning under $54,000).
--"Opportunity Adrift." (Source: Ed Trust analysis of NPSAS:08 data using NCES’s online DAS.)
