The achievement gap between the richest and poorest Americans has been widening for decades, and aid at the start of college may not be enough to bridge the divide.
During the past several decades, the impact of a person’s income level on her or his college attainment — for better or worse — has been amplified even as income inequality has increased, stalling the traditional equalizing power of a college education.
That’s according to a recent analysis by Martha Bailey and Susan Dynarski from U. Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The pair analyzed 70 years of U.S. Census data and compared Americans born in the early 1960s and early 1980s in terms of how many get to college, stay there and come out with a bachelor’s degree.
The results shows a clear trend, as the nation’s highest earners are several times more likely to stay in college long enough to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 25 than the lowest earners.
But the researchers instead focused on the gap between the extremes: Between the two samples, the bottom 25 percent of the country who finished college rose from 5 percent to 9 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, however, the percentage of the country’s top earners succeeding in college shot up 18 percent, from more than one-third of the group to more than half.
Meanwhile, shock waves from the 2008 recession still echo throughout the economy and national student debt is at its highest level ever, likely aggravating these effects.
The lowest earners clearly have a wall between them and college, but what the wall’s bricks are made of depends on who’s asked. Many social scientists believe the forces behind the numbers extend deep into the country’s social and economic landscape.
The pure power of money is hard to ignore, as high-income parents spend almost 10 times as much as low-income parents on each child, according to a recent article in The New York Times on the country’s growing education gap. Women in poverty are more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy, perhaps persuading many to leave college or never go.
Race and income are also intertwined, as the legacy of centuries of racism that continues today leaves a lasting imprint on the financial resilience of people of color.
But there’s more to this trend than just money, many observers agree. Some focus on the impact of parenting, pointing out that low-income families are more likely to have a single parent.
“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” James J. Heckman, an economist at U. Chicago, told The Times. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty … (when) giving families more (money) would improve the prospects of their children.”
“If people conclude that, it’s a mistake,” Heckman said.
The problem is instead incredibly complex, said Kelli King, program coordinator for U. Nebraska-Lincoln’s William H. Thompson Scholars Learning Community, which focuses on low-income students.
“It’s an enormous question,” King said. “Is it solely money? No. Is that a factor? Indeed.”
Three students and friends at U. Nebraska-Lincoln also pointed to single parents as an important factor, but not just because of the lost half of income.
“In a sense, we kind of owe it to our parents to be here,” said Cristina Garcia, a freshman child, youth and family studies major who lives with her dad, to nods of agreement from fellow freshmen Kateri Hiatt and Cristina Moreno. She’s the first in her family to go to college, and added that for many students like her, lacking an example and guide in the family can be another barrier.
“I come from a one-parent family and I’m here,” said Moreno, a UNL freshman who pointed to a necessary ingredient: hope. “It’s possible; of course it’s possible. I’m proof.”
Bailey and Dynarski suggest attempts to bridge the income-education gap must begin early to be effective.
“Differences in high school completion between children from low-income families and those from high-income families explain half of the gap in college entry,” they wrote in their analysis. “Interventions that operate mainly on the college-entry margin — such as scholarships, college outreach campaigns, and mentoring — can only alter the college-entry decisions of those who are able to respond. Those who have already dropped out of high school, in body or spirit, cannot benefit from these interventions.”
Along those lines, UNL began the Nebraska College Preparatory Academy in 2006. The program finds gifted, low-income students in middle school and provides guidance and other resources to facilitate acceptance to UNL while holding them to certain academic standards. All three of the freshmen are part of the academy and said they and most of their peers wouldn’t be in college without it.
“In addition to financial assistance, students must imagine themselves at a university,” Amber Hunter, the academy’s director, wrote in an email. “Imagine if you played football but didn’t know the rules of the game. How could you be successful and win?”