Many of the nation’s top flagship public colleges are “turning their backs” on qualified low-income and minority students, the Education Trust said Wednesday in presenting data from a new report.
While the recession has hit large public colleges and universities hard, many of these institutions continue to devote large sums of institutional financial aid on more affluent students, the Washington, D.C.-based group reported. Overall, institutional aid provided by colleges to affluent students with family incomes of at least $115,000 a year increased 28 percent from 2003 through 2007.
“Too many flagship institutions are literally turning their backs on academically qualified, low-income and minority students in favor of the children of the elite,” said Education Trust President Kati Haycock.
“In some states, the top-ranked private university is now more diverse than the public flagship. It’s almost as if some of America’s best public colleges have forgotten that they are, in fact, public.”
In the study, Opportunity Adrift, the Education Trust says this trend is particularly harmful for low-income students. The typical poor student at public colleges has an unmet financial need equal to 70 percent of his or her family’s annual income.
As a result, Haycock noted, many high-achieving, low-income students are attending open-access institutions where they face added pressures of simultaneously holding a job at the same time they attend class.
The largest public colleges and universities also made little progress in enrolling students of color since the Education Trust’s last report on the topic in 2006. Despite some colleges’ bold assertions of progress in this area, the report said, minority enrollment is up only slightly in recent years. Factoring in growth in the number of minority high school graduates, there is no gain on this issue of diversity.
