Higher Education

“If young people don’t have an equal shot at getting a great education, we’re going to create a society we’re not very happy with,” Catherine Hill, the president of Vassar, firmly believes. Her statement underscores a recent focus in the United States on equalizing the college application process across socioeconomic backgrounds, following a disturbing 2012 publication, The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students, by Caroline Hoxby and Christopher Avery. The study gained national attention with its revelation that while more than three-quarters of high-achieving, wealthy students attended one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges, only a third of high-achieving, low-income students attended one of those schools.
This gap between the fourth and first income quartiles on U.S. college campuses has attracted much public criticism of colleges and universities for their lack of socioeconomic diversity initiatives. The problem, however, is not a lack of college-level diversification efforts and financial aid programs. Rather, lowincome students remain disproportionately under-resourced and under-informed, and consequently continue to not even consider higher-education programs in the first place.
Equality in higher education can be achieved only with a concerted effort to increase awareness of the admissions process and financial aid programs among high-achieving, low-income students, and to increase the application resources available to these students in middle school and high school.
The Information Gap
There exists a widespread but unfounded belief that top-tier colleges are inaccessible, financially or otherwise, to high-achieving, low-income students. Yet Harvard’s financial aid policy offers a prime example of how colleges are working towards eliminating financial obstacles for low-income students. The policy makes a Harvard education free for families of admitted students with annual incomes of $65,000 or less. Similar initiatives have been adopted by many of the country’s elite universities. But these opportunities can only help students aware of their options.
This information gap expands beyond a lack of knowledge of financial aid: many low-income students are simply uneducated about the application process itself. Leslie Sullivan, a representative from the third-party student-college liaison QuestBridge, pointed out in her interview with the HPR that students who have more resources, or come from families who are familiar with the college process “know how to best portray [themselves] on an application,” whereas first-generation or low-income students “don’t have that resource.”
High school college guidance programs may seem like an obvious resource, but due to sparse funding in many public high schools, counselors can only do so much to enable highachieving, low-income students. John Katzman, CEO of a start-up called Noodle Education that provides data-driven recommendations to students applying to college, told the HPR that schools with a wealthier student population spend vastly more on student tutoring and SAT prep than schools servicing students of a lower socioeconomic background, where the average guidance counselor is often responsible for as many as 600 students. In such situations, as Katzman puts it, guidance counselors often “point students at good resources, and [focus their] energy on the kids they can help, through a triage process.” This sort of guidance program, however, often dismisses students who do not plan on going to college at all, thus ignoring the root of the issue and again promoting a socioeconomic gap among college-educated students.
Third Parties Step In
With high school guidance departments stretched thin, third parties have entered the advising space and have developed a number of creative solutions. Rutgers University, for instance, realized that very few low-income students from the high schools bordering its campus applied to Rutgers. It therefore founded the “Rutgers Future Scholars” program to select about 200 local, low-income students and guarantee them admittances to Rutgers upon successful completion of the RFS program. RFS has proven highly effective: in 2013 RFS scholars graduated high school at a rate 10 percent higher than the state average and 90 percent of RFS students enrolled in undergraduate institutions. The program has gained national recognition as other universities are beginning to mimic RFS.
Similar organizations, yet without any ties to specific universities or high schools, try to accomplish the same goal as RFS. QuestBridge is one high-profile organization that emphasizes the importance of training educators to act as a long-lasting college resource in under-resourced high schools. Sullivan emphasizes the importance of the organization’s relationship with teachers, as well-trained educators often encourage students to look into such resources.
American Honors, another third party organization, not only preps students, but also goes deeper and provides alternative paths through higher education. It does this by encouraging students to enroll in two-year community colleges and then transfer to four-year schools. In an interview with the HPR, Chief Academic Officer David Finegold said he believes that the organization is unique, as it combines “rigor and preparation
for success” with two years of “big savings.” As student debt and tuition prices continue to rise, an undergraduate education that begins with community college leaves middle and lower-income families and students with more resources to pursue both undergraduate and graduate educations. Finegold also addressed the importance of reaching out to high school students earlier than junior or senior year to provide students with advisors throughout the college admissions process. American Honors, Finegold explained, “gives first generation, lower-income students a playbook for college applications” that allows them to remain competitive in the college application process.
Katzman’s Noodle Education has also shown promise for dramatically widening quality college advice with little cost. Guidance counselors across the country can use Noodle to help their students find colleges that match their preferences. Noodle also calculates what financial aid package students would receive.
More to be Done
Despite the development of programs like RFS and American Honors, there remains a persistent socioeconomic gap on college campuses across the United States. The consensus is emerging, however, that greater impact will be realized by reaching out to students earlier in high school.
Finegold says American Honors has already begun this process by ensuring that students as young as 14 are already thinking about their academic future so that they may be competitive in the admissions process. The organization plans to accomplish these goals by developing tutoring programs and better preparing students for college-level math. QuestBridge also plans to dedicate more resources to contacting younger students and expand its target population from standardized test takers to those students who have not even considered applying to colleges.
Of course, as outreach expands, colleges will have to find a way to maintain their financial aid programs, which in the wake of the financial crisis may become increasingly limited as more low-income students apply. Maintaining a commitment to financial aid, even as the number of qualifying students increases, will be essential in socioeconomic diversity efforts.
Yet private institutions are unlikely to solve the education gap on their own. Despite cuts to state and national education budgets, public educational institutions should continue to support earlier outreach to high school students. The federal government, meanwhile, should focus efforts on widening advising access. After all, education can be, as Horace Mann said, “the great equalizer,” but only if the machinery is in place.