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Just as the Chronicle editorial appeared, the president of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, Daniel H. Weiss, sent a letter to college supporters. "The national dialogue about access and affordability that these decisions have engendered is, in my view, healthy and welcome," he wrote. "I am concerned, however, about the fundamental division that is being created between the majority of America's colleges and universities and the handful of super-wealthy schools—schools that have benefited from extraordinary resources for generations—that have now shifted their orientation from market-based economics to resource-based economics. As proud as we are of Lafayette's endowment [now about $775 million], we simply cannot match the actions of a school like Harvard, which benefits from an endowment of around $35 billion."
Conversations about access and affordability aren't particularly new in college admissions, says Duke's Guttentag. "Even when I started, twenty-five years ago, this was a subject of conversation within admissions offices. However, when it cost $20,000 to go to college, I think it was easier for low-income and moderate-income families to conceptualize shrinking that gap between their income or their assets and the costs of attending college." In terms of percentage of family income, "The gap may not be any bigger," he adds. "But in pure dollars, it looks bigger."
"The other thing is there's a greater burden on the schools now to provide financial aid, because the federal government is providing less. If you look at the percentage change of school-based rather than government-based financial aid, you see a significant shift."
On campuses, the income gap is now seen in sharper relief, says Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation and editor of America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education. Kahlenberg notes that a visitor is twenty-five times more likely to run into a rich student than a poor student on the nation's elite campuses. Just 10 percent of students at those institutions come from the bottom half of the socioeconomic spectrum. Kahlenberg calls such findings "extraordinary," especially given that they don't represent any "differences in innate talent among the different groups."
Kahlenberg commends higher education for having grappled with the scarcity of racial diversity. "But there hasn't been the same recognition of the importance of economic status." Elite institutions are "populated by good liberals who, appropriately, care about racial diversity," he says. Working-class people have not commanded their attention, he adds; they're not seen as a group with a history of struggle for validation. So their relatively small presence on campus "does not have the same galvanizing effect as the under-representation of students of color."
Several studies have found that economic affirmative action is actually far more popular among the general population than other forms of affirmative action, Kahlenberg says. He cites a national poll conducted five years ago by the Los Angeles Times. By a 24-point margin, respondents said colleges should not take into account the ethnicity, gender, or geographic location of applicants. In the same poll, by a majority of 2 to 1, respondents said they favored giving preferences in education to those who come from "an economically disadvantaged background," regardless of their ethnicity or gender. Kahlenberg says the findings comport with traditional ideas "about the American dream and about social mobility and about fairness and deservedness in the admissions process."
The social-mobility ideal is hardly reflected in the actual college-admissions process. In the admissions competition, "It's basically a wash whether you are low-income or not. It doesn't hurt you, but it certainly doesn't help either," Kahlenberg says. In fact, one consequence of the "need-blind" policies of selective schools—policies that separate admissions decisions from financial-aid awards—is that admissions officials don't probe a candidate's financial circumstances. The elite institutions do tend to reward alumni ties unabashedly, even though, according to Kahlenberg, that, too, is an unpopular stance among the public. In Duke's case, a "legacy" candidate has, on average, double the chances of acceptance.
This past spring, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the proportion of financially needy undergraduates at the wealthiest colleges and universities dropped between the 2004-05 and 2006-07 academic years. In 2004-05, 14.3 percent of the undergraduates at the country's seventy-five wealthiest private colleges received Pell Grants, which are awarded to students from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000. Two years later, Pell Grant recipents made up 13.1 percent of the student body at those schools. For Duke, the Pell Grant percentage in 2004-05 was 10.8; it was 9.5 percent two years later. (The federal Pell Grant program has its own problematic aspects, even as the number of Pell Grant recipients has increased over the years. Twenty years ago, Pell Grants met up to 60 percent of total tuition, fees, room, and board at the average four-year public college or university. Today the figure is closer to 33 percent.)
Another report, prepared by the Brookings Institution and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, showed that in recent years, only 11 percent of children from the poorest families have earned college degrees, compared with 53 percent of children from an income bracket in the top fifth. The Pew report also accents the continuing tie between a college degree and social mobility: A college graduate from a family in the lowest fifth of earners has a 62 percent chance of joining at least the middle class.
But low-income backgrounds don't characterize the student bodies of elite colleges. Like its peer institutions, Duke has long struggled to overcome the notion that it is a place for the wealthy. Duke's family-income level is high, even among its peer schools. According to self-reported data from last year's Duke seniors, more than a quarter came from families with incomes of $250,000 or more. There's a considerable concentration on the other end of the scale, though: Some 22 percent had family incomes of $75,000 or less.
"Is Duke a rich kids' school? Yes, to a certain extent all elite universities are rich kids' schools," says Sam Swartz, who graduated in May with a major in political science, a certificate in global health, and a minor in international comparative studies. With two other seniors, Swartz wrote a guest column in The Chronicle, "New Aid Policy Not Enough." The financial-aid expansion is "a great boost for the school," he says, "but the biggest problem is getting people in the pipeline," that is, getting students from lower-income families to apply. Swartz tutored sixth-graders at a Durham public school. He was struck by their responses when he asked where they might apply to go to college: "Duke is just too expensive." Swartz says, "Duke is not even on their radar, and it's just down the road.
"So many kids come here from these really rich suburbs. They go to wealthy public or private high schools, and they live these really cloistered lives of privilege in these elite enclaves. They come to Duke, and they see Durham as this impoverished place that they don't want to have anything to do with; they never come into contact with people who force them to think differently."
Swartz says an atmosphere of privilege influences many aspects of campus life—how often students go out to eat, where they spend their breaks, and even their choice of first jobs, since they want to buy into campus-wide notions of success. He mentions one of his classes, in health policy, where the conversation turned to the national problem of obesity. One of his fellow students observed that the solution would be for everyone to shop at places like Whole Foods. "Obviously, she never went into a Piggly Wiggly and saw that there is no organic-foods section, and she never thought about how some people have to be concerned about maximizing their calories, which may lead them to junk food." A more representative student body would provide "a more realistic educational experience," Swartz says.
It's not surprising that the economic elite dominate the higher-education elite—an illustration of the longstanding link between income and achievement. According to Guttentag, "You can show how a student from an advantaged family has an easier time getting a higher rating" in every area in which candidates for Duke admission are considered. "A family may be able to afford a house in a better school district. The student has access to more advanced courses; that affects the curriculum rating. If the student is having a little difficulty, the family can hire a tutor, and that affects his or her grades. Or a guidance counselor has a load of 100 students instead of 700 students. That affects the counselor's ability to advocate in-depth for the student in a recommendation letter.
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