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Analysis Reveals Disparity in Access to Postsecondary Education
A student’s opportunity to gain access to and afford a college education varies significantly from state to state, according to a report recently issued by Lumina Foundation for Education.
Unequal Opportunity: Disparities in College Access Among the 50 States, a study of 2,887 degree-granting colleges, classifies each college by admissibility and affordability and examines differences in the patterns within and among states for different types of institutions and different groups of students.
Institutions are defined as admissible if they are open to college-qualified students with test scores and grades that place them in the 25th to 75th percentiles of college-bound high school graduates from their state.
In assessing affordability, the study focuses on college expenses and family resources and the extent to which federal, state and institutional aid help meet financial need for specific types of students. If the sum of these potential financial sources met the estimated expenses, the college was considered affordable.
These two measures — affordability and admissibility — are combined to classify each institution in terms of its accessibility.
The analysis produced several key findings:
- Residential campuses tend to be less affordable than commuter campuses, even within the same university system, because financial aid does not usually make up the additional expense of a residential campus.
- Independent students have access to fewer affordable institutions and must borrow more than dependent students.
- Pell Grants and student loans help close the affordability gap for low-income students but do not cover the entire gap. And,
- Low-income students continue to have significantly fewer options than their higher-income counterparts.
A private, independent foundation based in Indianapolis, Lumina Foundation for Education addresses issues in financial access, educational retention and degree/certificate attainment, and opportunities for underserved students through research, grants for innovative programs and communication initiatives.
Unequal Opportunity: Disparities in College Access Among the 50 States includes state-by-state summaries of college-accessibility rates and is available at: http://www.luminafoundation.org/monographs/states/pdfs/Web.pdf