A new report from the Pell Institute, Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States, highlights the socioeconomic disparities in higher education over a 45-year period.
Staff writer Joe Martin spoke with Margaret Cahalan, one of the authors of the report, about what might be causing the stunted enrollment of low-income students in colleges and universities.
Daily Tar Heel: What is the purpose of this report?
Margaret Calahan: The first one was to really provide a tool, whereby, those of us that are interested in higher education equity issues could do a self-assessment. We have national goals and core values of peoples’ access to education within our country. So this was looking at the higher-ed level of, 'How well are we doing in this area?'
And then, the second one I think was a purpose to really initiate sort of a sheer dialogue among people who were interested to search for solutions.
DTH: What would you say is the main conclusion that you found?
MC: One of the main conclusions is that there are great inequalities of peoples’ chances of getting or entering post-secondary (education), where they will go and whether they will get a bachelor’s degree — depending upon their family’s income situation. And that, for some of these indicators, they are getting worse over time in the sense that while there has been an increase among all groups within our population in entering post-secondary (education) … those in the lowest quartile (of income) have had little movement.
It’s a complex issue. It’s related to many things — obviously, related to the college costs and the decline of the public support for higher education. And also, another factor is the competitiveness of entrance into selective schools and this leads to sort of a sorting that occurs with students ... really throughout elementary and middle and high school, into tracks.
The other thing is that when we look at other countries … many of these countries that have surpassed the U.S. are countries where just a decade ago we were ahead of them — and many of them are countries that have a lot of poverty and really low educational levels but they managed to set goals and now they have higher educational achievement than we do. So, I think that’s a sobering fact.