The good news, according to a research report out on Tuesday is that the college-going gap between students from rich and poor families has narrowed somewhat since 1970. The truly devastating news? The gap in bachelor’s completion by family income has roughly doubled in those years. What’s going on? And what can be done to remedy the problem?
The report, “Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States: 45 Year Trend Report,” from the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education and the University of Pennsylvania’s Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy, begins with the positive news: More students are going to college, and the gap by family income is declining. The share of dependent 18-to-24-year-olds who continue on to college increased from 1970 to 2012 for all income groups—and the gap between the top and bottom income quartiles declined from 46 percentage points to 36.
Despite those modest gains, the authors of the report, Margaret Cahalan and Laura Perna, find that the family-income difference in bachelor’s receipt by age 24 during roughly the same period skyrocketed. In 1970 dependent students from the wealthiest income quartile were 34 percentage points more likely to attain a bachelor’s degree than those from the bottom income quartile (40 percent vs. 6 percent). By 2013 that gap had ballooned to 68 percentage points (77 percent vs. 9 percent).
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2015/02/03/the-widening-income-gap-in-higher-education-and-what-to-do-about-it/