A Modest Proposal for Selective Colleges to Educate More Poor Students

Pell Grant recipients have been underrepresented at selective colleges for years. National reports have criticized those colleges with the lowest percentage of Pell students (Wash U in St. Louis had only 5.7% Pell Grant recipients in 2008 and has barely budged since then). But public shaming alone has had little impact.

A report I co-authored that was released this week by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce makes an exceedingly modest yet meaningful proposal: Move about 43,000 more Pell students into selective colleges. That is barely 0.5% of the 8 million undergraduates now receiving Pell Grants.

Why would such a small change be so meaningful? Because colleges are engines of social mobility. A college degree was the single most important factor for workers getting a job in the recovery. Our nation’s selective colleges are the most meaningful engines of mobility because four out of five students who start at one get a Bachelor’s degree. Only half of students who start at an open-access college (where pretty much everyone who applies gets in) ever obtain a Bachelor’s degree. The worst outcome for a college student is to start going, take out loans, and then never finish -- unfortunately this is mostly happening to low-income students.

Selective colleges are given so many privileges in our society. They pay no taxes on their real estate or on their endowments. Almost every one of them participates in federal financial aid programs and takes other forms of federal and state funding. But they don’t show enough social responsibility. 

Instead the majority of selective private colleges are complicit in the increasing income inequality in this country. The vast majority of their students are already wealthy, and they will take advantage of the degrees they earn and the connections they make to get even wealthier.

Meanwhile, low-income students are left to attend open-access colleges, which are more crowded, get far less spending per student, and lack the kind of resources, like counseling and full-time professors, that are in part what make selective colleges so successful. It’s no surprise then that at least half of their students drop out.

Which brings me back to my modest proposal. In order to show a commitment to serving all of society, we suggest that all colleges enroll at least 20 percent Pell Grant recipients. Currently about 39 percent of all undergraduates get a Pell Grant. So we are not asking that Pell Grant recipients be proportionately represented in all colleges, but that all colleges have a stake in educating the poorest students and give them a better chance at career success.

About 94 percent of colleges already meet this threshold. Among them are some of the most elite colleges in America, such as Columbia, NYU, USC, Emory, Smith, Amherst, and Vassar, as well as leading public institutions such as the UCLA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some of the colleges that don’t meet this threshold would have to add just a few hundred Pell Grant recipients.

This alone won’t change income inequality in this country. For selective colleges, however, it would be a strong signal to society that they are invested in everyone's success, not just that of the lucky few.