Over the last several days I have been struggling with some numbers I had seen reported. These numbers are statistics on minority enrollments and the persistence of enrollment gaps between African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Non-Hispanic White Americans and Asian Americans. A study by Carnavale and Fry for ETS "Crossing the Great Divide: Can we Achieve Equity When Generation Y Goes to College?" notes that, although the total number of minority students (African-American and Hispanic American) enrolled in college is projected to rise as is the percentage of total enrollments, a significant gap between the share of 18-24 year olds in these groups and the number of African American and Hispanic American 18-24 year olds enrolled as students will grow. (By 2015, 550,000 fewer young Hispanic-Americans enrolled than one would expect given projected population and over 200,000 fewer young African-Americans.)
This is a very funny number. The projected population totals are based sensibly on current trends in the growth of different groups (presumably it is based firstly on the number of children born between 1991 and 1997 and then with adjustments made for complicating factors such as immigration, deaths, and so on). However, the appendix to "Crossing" explains that projected enrollments are based on the assumption that current enrollment rates (obscenely lower for African-American and Hispanic Americans 18-24 year olds) will continue. (see Projection Methodology p. 55 of "Crossing"). So numbers such as those for Fall 2005 from the Census Bureau were used. These numbers show that while 40% of non-Hispanic White Americans 18-24 years old were enrolled full time or part time in four year colleges and 50% of Asian Americans only 29% of African Americans 18-24 years old were enrolled part time or full time in four year colleges and only 24% of Hispanic Americans of this age group were.
Given the age range reported (18 year olds to 24 year olds) one would expect to see a fraction of 18-24 year olds who have completed their undergraduate degrees. And indeed you do see this. According to the Census Bureau the numbers were 4% for White-Americans, 3.5% for African Americans, only 1.82% for Hispanic Americans, and almost 9% for Asian Americans in October 2005. More importantly and my main reason for looking at these numbers are that regardless of ethnicity there are significant differences in enrollment rates -in either two year or four year colleges or in four year colleges- according to SES (socioeconomic standing). Haveman and Smeeding( "The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility",
The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 2., Fall 2006, pp. 125-150) note that 90% percent of students from families with incomes in the top quartile of earnings were enrolled in college twenty months after graduation (73% in four year colleges) only 60% of students from the bottom quartile were enrolled in college twenty months after graduation (with fewer than half enrolled in four year colleges, 37% in two year colleges, and 17% enrolled in vocational/technical schools.)
To assume that low enrollment rates will persist -as Carnavale and Fry implicitly do- is not very helpful. Similarly, while racial discrimination is in part the cause of lower SES, it is much more important to focus attention on social class as an obstacle to higher education and success. To focus on race seems to invite substantive versus formalist interpretations of the achievment gap. In other words, that the differences in achievment are in large part due to cultural factors. However, controlling for race, there is a strong statistically significant relationship between family income levels and enrollment in college (in either two or four year schools or in four year schools). Using data for October 2005, I find that enrollment rates were about 23% points higher for 18-24 year olds students from families with incomes in the $100,000 to $150,000 range than they were for 18-24 year olds whose families earned between $30,000-$40,000 for example. (These numbers are derived from regression I have run using Census Bureau data on fall enrollments for Fall of 2005.)
I am incredibly impressed with a paper entitled "Reducing Inequality in Higher Education: Where Do We Go From Here?" by Cornell University's Ronald Ehrenberg . I am impressed first because of its focus on SES and the inequalities that are perpetuated by both the differences in access to higher education as well as differences in levels of success after a student enters colleges. I am also impressed because of its focus on an analysis of what possibly can be done -in terms of financial aid, education policy at the primary and secondary levels, and within college itself- to assist students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds . For good measure there is a thoughtful discussion of the direct and indirect financial pressures colleges and universities face and how these pressures have led them to worry far less about their role in perpetuating inequality.
The paper was presented at the
Conference on Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence, and Success, Syracuse University, September 23-24, 2005). Ehrenberg's main points are (1) that little advance has been made in enrollments of students from low income families since the 1970s, (2) that states have increasingly faced tight budgets and, as a result, have kept state spending per student at more or less constant levels since the 1970s, (3) that increased spending per student has therefore been funded largely by tuition increases, (4) that , perversely, as the private returns to college have grown and the gap in earnings between the college educated and those without college degrees has increased, the tuition increases have been more or less tolerated by middle class families. The increases are regarded as the price to be paid for protecting their position. (5) that the increase in tution at four year colleges has shifted proportionately more and more low income students into two year colleges, (6) that given the difficulty of transitioning from two year to four year colleges, especially to those schools where transfers from two year colleges are relatively rare -persistence- the ability of transfer students to complete their undergraduate degrees has fallen.
He outlines several very recent programs at flagship public universities such as UVA, the University of Texas, and UNC-Chapel Hill to increase enrollment of students from low-income families as well as very recent efforts by Princeton (1998), Harvard (2005), and Yale (2006) to increase enrollment rates and graduation rates of students from low-income families. Very selective schools by definition admit and graduate mostly students from wealthier families. Hill, Winston, and Boyd ("Affordability: Family Incomes and Net Prices at Highly Selective Private Colleges and Universities" Journal of Human Resources, 40 (fall 2005)) note that 108,721 students earned undergraduate degrees at the 28 highly selective private colleges and universities in their study. This implies that well under 10% of all the students earning bachelor's degrees in spring of 2002 received their degrees from such schools. Given the cost of attending such institutions, one can safely assume that families of relatively modest means were receiving some sort of financial aid. Assuming that all middle class and low-income families attending these schools received some kind of aid, students from families earning less than $51,000 a year represented only 17% of students graduating from such schools.
To make these very exclusive schools more inclusive is fine. However, students from wealthy families are disproportionately represented in these schools and always will be. Besides this, as noted above only a small percent of college graduates in a given year earn their degrees from such institutions. Therefore changes here cannot be expected to create more than a ripple overall. What is needed are similar programs at the colleges and universities where the majority of students pursue their education. However as Ehrenberg points out there is a danger in such institutions being more inclusive because these "lesser" colleges and universities face even more risk -both financially and politically- if they follow suit.
The financial resources of such schools are far more limited. As Hill,Winston, and Boyd (in the study of highly selective private colleges and universities already mentioned above) note there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between the net price students from low-income families are asked to pay for their schooling and the size of the endowment per student a particular school has. In the case of schools with much lower endowments per student Ehrenberg notes that they "...do not have the large flow of annual giving and the large endowments that the University of Virginia or the University of Chapel Hill have and thus it will be more difficult for them to develop the resources necessary to support programs such as Access UVA or the Carolina Covenant."
He goes on to point out that "If these flagship institutions are successful in diversifying their student bodies along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines, they run the risk of alienating the traditional supporters of their institutions; the upper and middle class families whose children attend high school that have been large feeders schools for them. This may translate into political pressure to reverse policies that led to the diversification, or a further loss of financial support for the public institutions." (Ehrenberg, p. 14). Other schools face the same political problem if students from the families that have typically supported these schools have a more difficult time being admitted into these schools because equally or more deserving students from poorer families have taken their place.
Therefore the current efforts that are being made to make access to higher education more equitable are likely to have less impact than one would hope for or what is needed to really change the way opportunity is distributed. A few cards in the deck are being moved around and most of the aces are still at the top. The entire deck needs to be reshuffled.
