Students from America's poorest families are vastly underrepresented at the nation's top universities, according to a recent study from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).
This limits not only in their access to the highest quality education, but also to the best paying jobs and graduate and professional schools, said vice president of ETS, Anthony P. Carnevale, and Stephen J. Rose, an economist with think tank ORC Macro International, who conducted the study.
"There is even less socioeconomic diversity than racial or ethnic diversity at the most selective colleges," Carnevale told the Los Angeles Times.
As a result of their findings, the researchers are calling for a revision to the traditional debate over affirmative action in college admissions, suggesting that not only race, but also socioeconomic status should be given special consideration when evaluating a student. In addition to this, they felt the nation's top universities should make the admission of poorer students a priority, and the grant of financial aid a certainty.
The statistics speak for themselves. Out of the 1.2 million high school students who apply to four-year colleges, only about 15 percent will go to the nation's most selective colleges. There are 146 of these "top tier" colleges, according to a rating system by Barron's that Carnevale and Rose used in their study.
Seventy-four percent of the students who attend these universities come from families with the nation's highest incomes. In comparison, only 3 percent of students come from the lowest income families, and a mere 10 percent are from the lower half of the income bracket.
The affluence of a student's family can make a huge difference in the opportunities available to them in high school, as it relates to the quality of their education, the emphasis placed on academics, ability to be involved in extracurriculars, and tutoring.
Carnevale and Rose also concluded from their research that while selective colleges manage to give slight preference to low-income students, on average, "the top 146 colleges do not provide a systemic preference and could in fact admit far greater numbers of low-income students, including low-income minority students, who could handle the work."
"We do look at it informally," said John Latting, Director of Undergraduate Admissions for Hopkins, "in the sense that the staff here is trained to take it into account." The idea, Latting said, was to evaluate students with respect to how extensive their opportunities were growing up.
The main factor that the Hopkins admissions officers look at is whether or not the student is the first generation of his family to attend college. "We find that to be a useful measure to help understand who the students are that are not getting the kind of direction that other students are," said Latting.
Yet Latting added that, "I would not claim that we successfully judge students based on the opportunities they've had ... it's inevitable that students that have had more opportunities are going to be admitted at a higher rate." Latting also said that the number of Hopkins students fitting the previously mentioned "first generation" criterion has become increasingly smaller.
The income figures are even more startling when compared to what Carnevale and Rose found on the ethnic diversity of these "top tier" schools. Carnevale and Rose found that, "Overall, a little more than 22 percent of the students in the top tier selectivity are Asian, African American or Hispanic (11 percent Asian, 6 percent Black and 6 percent Hispanic." After a comparison of numbers, they found that there are four times as many African American and Hispanic students as there are poor students.
However, the challenge most universities face, as was also mentioned by Latting, is for colleges to consider economic disadvantage, but also to admit the best and brightest students.
Carnevale and Rose present a solution to this dilemma. They called in the report for "the expansion of current affirmative action programs to include low-income students because they can add both racial and economic diversity." To this end, they want the current policy of racial affirmative action plans to remain in place, with the added consideration of socioeconomic status -- this will not lead to the admission of less qualified students, they contend. They do, however, explore other forms of evaluation more heavily weighted towards numbers, i.e. test scores and high school grades; however, they felt that these types of plans do not adequately address the problem, and can lead to less overall racial diversity.
Harvard Law school professor C. Lani Guinier, who was also quoted in Savage's article, said that the admissions policies of the nation's most selective colleges are a part of the "great inequality machine." She agreed with Carnevale and Rose's assessment that test scores were also relative to parental income. "Test scores correlate with family affluence," she said.
The report also calls for stronger financial aid policies for low-income students, rather than "hollow commitments." Carnevale and Rose found also that students who attend the most selective universities have a better rate of graduation, a greater rate of acceptance to graduate and professional schools as well as greater success in the labor market. Students' chances of finding a better job can be as much as 20 percent higher, they said.
For more detailed information, read a copy of Carnevale and Rose's report published on http://www.tcf.org.
