If you want a job, then go to the best college that accepts you. It’s a simple formula. Anyone can follow it.
So why are certain groups of Americans still being left behind?
Maybe it’s because of their race, or because they’re poor, male or grew up with a single parent. Across the landscape of higher education, deep social fault lines are being exposed by graduation and success rates, and College Board’s report “Education Pays 2010” provides the current evidence.
“There are very big gaps both among racial groups and among income groups in terms of whether people go to college and—more than that—whether they complete college,” says Sandy Baum, professor emerita of economics at Skidmore College who co-wrote the report as an independent policy analyst for College Board.
Because of the rigorous time and monetary commitments associated with earning a college degree, there are a number of variables—from the high school they attended to the color their skin—that must fall just right for students to emerge successful. Most socio-economic factors are directly related to success in college and later in life and the report (the most recent study of these factors) was able to identify racial, familial, economic and gender-based fault lines.
While only 55 percent of high school graduates in the poorest fifth of Americans enrolled in college when statistics were recorded in 2008, 80 percent of students in the highest fifth did. A wide range of variables have been associated with this discrepancy: better high schools in nicer areas, a predisposed attitude of success in well-off families and a higher likelihood of two-parent households—the greatest indicator of success in high school.
One of the most controversial divisions in higher education is race, and the data backs it up. Asians had the highest college completion rate at both public and private four-year institutions, with whites not far behind them. Hispanics and blacks follow at 11 and 18 percentage points lower, respectively.
At Northwestern, the only ethnic group that has shown a true upward trend in terms of first-year enrollment is Hispanics, jumping from 4.1 percent in 2000 to 8.7 percent in 2011. Black students’ first-year enrollment remained stable at 6 percent, while white enrollment has consistently remained the plurality and usually the majority, as well. Asians enrollment has fluctuated over the years but remains in the mid-teens and international student enrollment remains consistently below 10 percent, though that may change as more emphasis is put on recruiting (and if University President Morton Schapiro gets what he wants, giving scholarships to) the best international students.
Women have been slowly gaining ground on men on American campuses since the 1970s, and their enrollment rates overtook those of their male counterparts around 1990. “Within every racial-ethnic group, men are less likely to go to college and if they go to college less likely to complete than women are,” Baum says.
Northwestern follows suit—every year with available data, from 2000, the incoming class had more women than men, though the difference was usually only a few percentage points away from 50-50.
Don’t get depressed yet; college isn’t just a sob story. Higher rates of recent high school graduates are applying and enrolling every year, and even as tuition prices skyrocket, financial aid is rising to match it.
However, the earnings gap between those with college degrees and those without is also rising at an alarming rate. “It’s not just about earnings,” Baum explains further. “People who go to college have different attitudes. Their children do better, they vote, they volunteer. There’s all kinds of things that are different.”
So the benefits still outweigh the downfalls of college, and the gap is felt hardest by groups with lower college enrollment and completion rates. “While more and more people of all backgrounds are going to college now, the gaps really persist,” Baum says.
Continue the conversation with our feature from the winter mag!