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As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, New Efforts to Level the Field
April 22, 2004
By DAVID LEONHARDT
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - At prestigious universities around the
country, from flagship state colleges to the Ivy League,
more and more students from upper-income families are
edging out those from the middle class, according to
university data.
The change is fast becoming one of the biggest issues in
higher education.
More members of this year's freshman class at the
University of Michigan have parents making at least
$200,000 a year than have parents making less than the
national median of about $53,000, according to a survey of
Michigan students. At the most selective private
universities across the country, more fathers of freshmen
are doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy
members, farmers or members of the military - combined.
Experts say the change in the student population is a
result of both steep tuition increases and the phenomenal
efforts many wealthy parents put into preparing their
children to apply to the best schools. It is easy to see
here, where BMW 3-series sedans are everywhere and students
pay up to $800 a month to live off campus, enough to rent
an entire house in parts of Michigan.
Some colleges are starting to take action. Officials long
accustomed to discussing racial diversity are instead
taking steps to improve economic diversity. They say they
are worried that their universities are reproducing social
advantage instead of serving as an engine of mobility.
"It's very much an issue of fundamental fairness," Lawrence
H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said in an interview.
"An important purpose of institutions like Harvard is to
give everybody a shot at the American dream."
The University of Maryland recently said it would no longer
ask students from families making less than $21,000 a year
to take out loans, and would instead give them scholarships
to cover tuition. Officials at Harvard, the University of
North Carolina and the University of Virginia all recently
announced similar, even more generous policies.
Stanford and Yale have altered early-admission programs,
partly out of a concern that they give an unfair advantage
to students who do not need to compare financial-aid offers
before they can commit to a college.
Over all, at the 42 most selective state universities,
including the flagship campuses in California, Colorado,
Illinois, Michigan and New York, 40 percent of this year's
freshmen come from families making more than $100,000, up
from about 32 percent in 1999, according to the Higher
Education Research Institute. Nationwide, fewer than 20
percent of families make that much money.
The recent increase has continued a two-decade trend that
extends well beyond the best-known colleges.
In 2000, about 55 percent of freshmen at the nation's 250
most selective colleges, public and private, were from the
highest-earning fourth of households, compared with 46
percent in 1985, according to the institute, which is based
at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The number from the bottom fourth dipped slightly over that
period, while those from the middle 50 percent fell
sharply. In many cases, the less wealthy students went to
less selective schools, including lower-ranked campuses of
state universities.
"There has been over the last several decades a whole slew
of efforts to level the playing field for college
admissions," said Alexander W. Astin, a professor of higher
education at U.C.L.A. "In spite of all these efforts,
access for poor kids and kids of less well-educated parents
has not improved. And for kids in the middle, it's actually
declined."
"This isn't good news, and it's somewhat surprising," he
added.
If anything, some college officials said, the statistics
may understate the level of student wealth because they
rely on a survey of freshmen. When officials at Binghamton
University, part of the State University of New York,
matched survey data with financial-aid forms, they found
that students often listed their parents' income as lower
than it really was, said Cheryl Brown, the director of
undergraduate admissions.
At Harvard, for instance, financial-aid forms suggest that
the median family income is about $150,000.
The increasing wealth on the nation's most prestigious
campuses has gone largely unnoticed until recently, though,
obscured by two other trends, education scholars say.
Over the last 40 years, colleges have become more diverse
in other ways, admitting far more Asian-American, black,
Jewish and Latino students than they once did. Many
colleges also draw from a broader geographic base, with
Michigan taking more out-of-state applicants, for example,
Ivy League universities relying less on students from the
Northeast and almost all colleges recruiting more foreign
students.
Colleges have meanwhile increased tuition rapidly, causing
the number of students on financial aid to jump and
creating an impression that they are from a wider economic
spectrum than in the past. In reality, financial aid simply
stretches far higher up the income ladder than before.
At Michigan, admissions officers created a new section of
the university's application where high school students can
say how much money their parents make and whether any of
their grandparents went to college. Michigan started
devising the questions last year when the Supreme Court was
considering its affirmative action policies. The court
ultimately upheld affirmative action but required the
university to eliminate a point system that gave extra
points to minorities.
With the new questions, Theodore L. Spencer, director of
undergraduate admissions, said Michigan wanted to give
proper credit to students who had compiled good academic
records without the advantages that others had. "We
certainly want to look at ways to create a better
distribution of students," he said.
Michigan is still not dominated by wealth as some private
colleges are. Almost half of its students are from families
earning less than $100,000 a year, the student survey
shows. But the changes are still unmistakable, say
professors and others here.
"When most people think of a typical college student,
they're thinking about eating peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches and having massive debts," said Scott E. Mendy,
a junior from Tigard, Ore., who receives financial aid. At
Michigan, he said, "people live very well."
Summer jobs? Many undergraduates do not think twice about
accepting an internship that barely covers their expenses.
Many can afford to take spring break trips to Mexican
resorts or Europe. Extracurricular activities often seem to
be run by students who can devote dozens of hours to them
each week without trying to hold down a campus job, said
Angela Galardi, a senior who recently completed a term as
president of the student government.
The forces behind the rising wealth on many campuses seem
to be both economic and psychological, university officials
say. As the income of college graduates has risen much
faster than that of less educated workers, getting into the
right college has become an obsession in many upper-income
high schools.
With the help of summer programs, preparation classes for
college entrance examinations and sometimes their own
private admissions counselors, students in these schools
assemble more impressive applications than they once did.
They also apply to more top colleges.
The advantages of campuses with increasingly wealthy
student bodies are obvious, educators say: the colleges
have more resources for research and student activities,
more professors doing cutting-edge work and more students
who received solid high school educations.
But they also have much steeper tuition bills than in the
past, and this seems to have turned off many middle- and
low-income families. Some students are not willing to take
on the tens of thousands of dollars of debt that is often
necessary. Others, studies show, underestimate the
available amount of financial aid.
"We were founded on the principle of allowing larger
numbers of students to go to college in an affordable way,"
Mr. Spencer, Michigan's admission director, said. "But
having said that, the price of college has gone up, and
many of the truly needy will not bother to apply."
That concerns people here and on other campuses because of
what it could mean for the variety of campus life and for
the broader economy.
"We're very worried," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's
director of undergraduate admissions. "There are some very,
very talented kids in the bottom quartile who aren't even
going to college. It's a huge waste of talent."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/education/22COLL.html?ex=1083673529&ei=1&en=edecb77d5a1feb00
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