Do our higher education policies and practices diminish or advance the income gap?

From "Consequences of Inequality, 1967 to 2007" a report from Postsecondary Education OPPORTUNITY,  Issue Number 217, July 2010:

“Among the myths we are taught as Americans is that education is the great social equalizer. Education provides social mobility. Anyone can go to college. Et cetera ad nauseam.

In fact the data say that the opposite is true. Education as an industry is more appropriately described as the engine of social division. The sorting and "classification" processes of education are especially true of higher education. Colleges and universities flagrantly practice class-based selective admission. Many of these institutions even brag about what they do and they leave a public record in their wake." (p. 1)

". . . from 1980 to present, our educational system has increased bachelor's degree attainment by age 24:

• By 41.6 percentage points for 24 year olds from the top quartile of family income (above $107,000 in 2008),
• By 14.7 percentage points for 24 year olds from the third quartile of family income (between $67,000 and $107,000), 
• By 7.4 percentage points for 24 year olds from the second quartile of family income (between $38,000 and $67,000),
• By 2.8 percentage points for 24 year olds from the bottom family income quartile (below $38,000)." (p. 2)

"Higher education produces graduates that earn considerably more than those who lack higher education. One Census Bureau analysis puts this difference at one million dollars over a working lifetime. Since the early 1970s. . . these income gaps have widened. Widening educational attainment gaps are compounded by widening income gaps and vice versa. Across educational attainment levels educational opportunity is increasingly determined by class privileges (or lack thereof) inherited at birth and untouched by public policy (at least in the United States since 1980)." (p. 2)

The remainder of the article reviews data on the social consequences, ranging from illicit drug use and low birth weights to low voting rates, of the growing income inequality in the United States.

This article can be found at www.postsecondary.org (for subscribers only)


What we're reading—a report on postsecondary education costs, productivity, and accountability

The Delta Project recently released a new report, Trends in College Spending 1998–2008: Where does the money come from? Where does it go? What does it buy? (see full report – PDF)      

The following is from the report:

“What the public and most policy makers can see is that, whatever else happens, college tuitions continue to go up—at a rate faster than inflation and family incomes—with no discernible pay-off in quality, opportunity, or results.” (p. 7) See Figure 1 below or view larger.

Student tuitions are covering significantly more of educational costs in 2008 than was the case five and ten years earlier.” (p. 30) View Figure 12 below or click here.

With the sole exception of the private research sector, the student share of costs is rising primarily to replace institutional subsidies—and not to enable greater spending. This practice is sometimes called cost shifting, and it means that institutions are increasing tuition rather than cutting costs. While students are paying more, they are not necessarily getting more bang for their educational buck.” (p 32) View Figure 14 below or click here.

What we're reading—the importance of taking more than one course in diversity

Nicholas Bowman (Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame) studied the impact of the number of diversity courses students took during their first year of college on their diversity orientation and well-being. Bowman hypothesized that the deep challenges that many students experience in diversity courses could not be formatively resolved in a single course and that only after two or more courses would students show significant gains on these outcomes. Using data from the Wabash National Study, Bowman found:

As predicted, students who take a single diversity course generally do not
experience greater well-being and orientations toward diversity than students
who take no courses at all. Although the effect was marginal, students who
take no diversity courses actually report greater psychological well-being than students who take one course. Since many of today’s college students grow
up in relatively homogenous environments, this single curricular experience with diversity may create a sense of disequilibrium that is not resolved by the end of students’ first year. In addition, after taking a full-term diversity course, students
are not more comfortable with differences and do not have a greater relativistic appreciation of diversity than students who take no such courses. (p. 557)

He also found that

The effects of taking at least two diversity courses are uniformly positive.
Compared with students who took one course, students who took two courses
(or three or more) have greater well-being, are more comfortable with differences,
have a greater appreciation of others’ similarities and differences, and are more
likely to interact and intend to interact with diverse others. Thus, many issues
and concerns that students may have been working through in their first course
seem to be resolved after taking a second course. The benefits of taking two
diversity courses were comparable to taking three or more, which suggests that
two courses may be sufficient to diminish or eliminate any disequilibrium that
they initially faced. (pp. 557–558)

This finding is consistent with what we see for all of the good practices and experiences that benefit student learning—it is not whether students experience good practices and formative experiences, it is how consistently they experience these practices and experiences.  

Featured article:

Bowman, N. A. (2010). Disequilibrium and resolution: The nonlinear effects of diversity courses on well-being and orientations toward diversity. Review of Higher Education, 33, 543–568. (This article can be accessed through a subscription to Project MUSE >>)

Other related articles

Bowman, N. A. (2009). College diversity courses and cognitive development among students in privileged and marginalized groups. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2, 182–194.

Hurtado, S. Milem, J. F. Clayton-Pederson, A. R., & Allen, W.R. (1998). Enhancing campus climates for racial/ethnic diversity: Educational policy and practice. Review of Higher Education, 21, 279–302. (Available through Project Muse >>)

Whose expectations are unrealistic?

In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education report on a financial aid survey, Eric Hoover reported: 

...the survey's findings also suggest that many respondents have unrealistic expectations about the amount of aid they will receive. Ninety-three percent of respondents said they planned to apply for financial aid. Of those students, 51 percent expected to receive need-based aid, 56 percent expected to receive merit-based aid, and 30 percent expected to receive some kind of aid for their personal achievements.

One striking finding: Nearly two-thirds of students with SAT scores of 1250 or higher expected to receive merit aid. Almost as many respondents with scores between 1000 and 1240 expected to receive merit aid, and so did about 45 percent of students with scores 1000 or below.

The widespread availability of merit aid seems to have created "a climate of expectations" among applicants, says Richard A. Hesel, a principal of Art & Science Group: "You have this sticker-price fear, but there's also a lot going on that raises students' expectations about what they're going to get. I've seen this for a long time, and it's gotten worse."

Are students being unrealistic about the aid they can get, or are colleges being unrealistic about what they can charge? For more read "On Sticker Prices and Wishful Thinking."