In the popular imagination, public colleges are a place where a state’s students from all walks of life can gather, learn from each other and earn the type of education that will help them succeed beyond graduation. But new research suggests many of these schools are becoming increasingly out of reach for low-income students, putting that ideal in danger.
At 52% of public colleges, students from families that earned $30,000 per year or less paid at least $10,000 annually to attend during the 2015-2016 academic year, according a report released Wednesday by New America, a Washington-based think tank. That’s up from just 34% of public colleges in the 2010-2011 academic year.
“That’s just incredibly alarming,” said Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst with the Education Policy program at New America and the author of the report. “Particularly for the lowest income students [public colleges] are getting out of reach.”
The report is the latest to raise questions about the ability of public colleges to serve as engines of economic mobility. A variety of factors are putting that historical role in jeopardy. During the Great Recession and, in its wake, states cut funding to public colleges, pushing them to look elsewhere for revenue, including towards students who pay more to attend.
At 52% of public colleges, students from families that earned $30,000 per year or less paid at least $10,000 annually to attend during the 2015-2016 academic year. That’s up from 34% in 2010-2011.
These students are also particularly valuable in an environment where demographic shifts mean that colleges have fewer high school graduates from which to fill their classes. A drive for prestige, at least as measured by college rankings, also means that schools will look towards students with high standardized test scores, which often correlate with income.
Colleges use so-called merit aid to lure these students, often at the expense of aid to needy students, according to Burd. Even with a scholarship, students who would otherwise pay full price typically wind up paying more to attend a given college than low-income students. “All of the incentives are leading to everyone competing for the same white suburban student,” he said. “There aren’t enough incentives to push them to counter that.”
The way those incentives play out can be seen at six public flagship colleges in the Midwest, arguably some of the most prominent symbols of the idea that public higher education can fuel the American Dream.
Although these schools enroll and graduate more black, Latino and low-income students than in previous years, the increases aren’t keeping up with the growth of those populations in their states, according to a separate report also released Wednesday by the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
“There is still a lot of work left to be done by these institutions to work to close those gaps, to bring in more students of color and more low-income students to benefit from the educations that they offer,” said Mamie Voight, the vice president of policy research at IHEP and one of the authors of the report.
Awarding the bulk of financial aid based on need, eliminating any advantage to students from applying early, and not taking legacy or students’ demonstrated interest in a school into consideration when evaluating their application, among other policies, can help make public colleges more equitable, according to IHEP.
Both Voight and Burd agree that making these kinds of changes requires a commitment from a school that often starts at the top. “It’s a matter of changing the way an institution operates, it’s a matter of a leader taking this on,” Voight said.
But if more public schools continue to get more expensive for low-income students, as Burd has observed over the past several years, he said it raises the question as to whether “higher education becomes part of the problem rather than the solution,” to making the nation more equitable.
Some colleges have made significant strides
For John Gunkel, the vice chancellor for academic programs and strategic partnerships at Rutgers University-Newark, a public college Newark, N.J., the idea of catering to low-income students and students of color just makes sense.
The school appears to be succeeding at attracting and supporting low-income students: 53% of students at Rutgers-Newark receive a Pell grant, the money the federal government provides to low-income students, students from families earning less than $30,000 per year pay $7,796 on average.
Historically, the school’s enrollment has always been heavy on first-generation and commuter students. It’s always been part of Rutgers-Newark’s mission to serve those students, he said. But over the past several years, Gunkel said officials have become more intentional about ensuring equitable outcomes for students who are often underrepresented and underserved by higher education.
More than half of the students at Rutgers University-Newark, a public college in New Jersey, receive a Pell grant, the money the federal government provides to low-income students.
“We need more students going to college,” Gulkin said. “We need a broader array both from a moral perspective, but also just from a policy perspective, just from the demands of a job market. We need to be more expansive, economically politically and morally.”
To that end, the school expanded financial-aid offerings, including by providing completion grants — or small sums of money to students close to graduating, but struggling financially — and through a program that allows any student who is a resident of Newark and from a family with an annual income of $60,000 or less to attend the school tuition free.
Many students are commuting in part to save money, so officials also look for ways to make college logistically feasible for its students to finish school on time. They do this by making sure campus institutions have flexible hours so students can stay connected, even if they don’t live in dorms, Gunkel said.
Officials also work with faculty to schedule and structure classes in a way that don’t “tangle students” on their path towards a degree by, for example, requiring them to be in two places at once to get the credits they need to graduate on time, he added.
These initiatives grew out of recognition by the school’s leaders that the future of public higher education would mean working with a student population that better represents the country demographically and economically amid funding constraints, Gunkel said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
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