A new report this week from the American Council on Education affirms what those familiar with minority serving institutions (MSIs) know to be true of the institutions’ significant role in bolstering the economic mobility of low-income students.
Using newly released federal data, ACE’s report, “Minority Serving Institutions as Engines of Upward Mobility,” finds that students who attend MSIs move up the economic ladder at two to three times the rate of students who attend non-MSIs – despite the limited financial resources the institutions receive compared to non-MSIs.
“These institutions are meeting students where they are, and they’re doing it with a great intentionality both to educate students in the way that they need given their life circumstances, and also propelling students up the income ladder in terms of where students end up later,” said Dr. Lorelle L. Espinosa, lead author of the report and assistant vice president for ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy.
In a “first-of-its-kind” analysis, researchers analyzed Stanford University professor Dr. Raj Chetty’s Equality of Opportunity Project, which focused, in part, on higher education’s impact on intergenerational mobility. The new report examined IPEDS data and data from more than 359 MSIs – with few exclusions due to smaller sample size or limitations – in IPEDS enrollment by race data for some institutions.
MSIs include historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs); tribal colleges and universities (TCUs); Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs); Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions (ANNH); Asian American and Native American-Pacific Islander-serving institutions (AANAPISI); predominantly Black institutions (PBIs); and Native American-Serving, nontribal institutions (NASNTI).
To measure upward mobility, ACE researchers identified the income information of individuals at two time periods — the income of a student’s parents at the time of the student’s first postsecondary enrollment, and then the income of the student themselves at age 30. Income data was reported in terms of quintiles, the report said, and institutions were given MSI or non-MSI designations based on IPEDS data.
Researchers’ findings show that across all MSI types, four-year MSIs propel more students from the lowest income quintile to the top income quintile than four-year non-MSIs. HSIs’ mobility rate is noteworthy, as these institutions propelled their students into the highest income quintile at three times the rate of non-MSIs (4.3 percent compared to 1.5 percent, respectively).
