The top 4 percent of colleges and universities hold three quarters of all endowment wealth in higher education, yet four in five of those 138 schools expect the neediest families to hand over more than 60 percent of their income to cover the cost of attendance, according to a report released Thursday by the Education Trust.
Advocacy groups and lawmakers are placing greater scrutiny on the ways in which the nation’s most elite halls of learning spend their wealth, as families struggle with the exorbitant cost of college. Critics of these schools question their commitment to using their largesse to educate students, especially those from less fortunate families. Universities have argued that their endowments are not savings accounts that can easily be drawn down and that they are raising money to cover the financial need of low-income students. Policy analysts at Education Trust say they could do more.
Read more at The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/04/wealthy-universities-are-doing-a-poor-job-helping-low-income-students-report-says/