WASHINGTON – Despite gains in college access by minorities, the top tiers of higher education are becoming more affluent and more White as the lower tier and two-year colleges increasingly accommodate more low-income minority students, researchers declared Thursday during a policy forum centered on low-income students and college access.
“There is almost no way that you can use affirmative action to begin to equalize the tiers in this system,” said Dr. Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Work Force, during the forum’s lunchtime address at the National Press Club in Washington.
“Since we can’t move low-income and minority students en masse into high-quality systems, we have to move the high-quality systems and the money to pay for them toward the two-year schools and less selective colleges,” Carnevale noted.
The forum, titled “Are Efforts to Increase Equity in Higher Education Working?”, focused on a new book published by the Century Foundation Press examining how better financial aid coupled with strong retention support can empower disadvantaged students to access highly-selective institutions, allowed book contributors to discuss significant points of their research.
The book, titled Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low Income Students Succeed in College, underscores the lack of socioeconomic diversity at highly-selective schools and includes a chapter by Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, director of research at the Georgetown Center on Education and the Work Force, on college access and inequality.
Researchers found that the socioeconomic barriers to accessing a highly-selective institution were greater than racial ones.
“Being severely socioeconomically disadvantaged predicts an SAT score on the math and verbal sections of 399 points lower than being the most economically advantaged,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at Century and the editor of Rewarding Strivers.
