College enrollments reflect class stratification Oregon Education - OregonLive.com:
"Our higher education system is becoming increasingly stratified along social class lines, with a growing share of low-income high school graduates choosing two-year community colleges over four-year universities, a recent report shows.
Thomas Mortenson, a higher education policy analyst who runs an organization called Postsecondary Education Opportunity, recently documented the trend by looking at where high school graduates receiving Pell Grants choose to attend college. Federal Pell Grants are awarded to students from lower-income families on the basis of economic need.
Mortenson found the share of Pell Grant recipients nationwide enrolled in public or private four-year colleges dropped from 60 percent in the 1970s to a record low of 44 percent in 2007-08, though rates vary widely among states. About 52 percent of Oregon Pell Grant recipients attended a public or private four-year college in 2007-08.
The trend, writes Mortenson in a report released last month, is the result not only of recession but also of states shifting more of the burden for higher education to student tuition, and of financial aid for needy students failing to kept pace with tuition increases."
"Our higher education system is becoming increasingly stratified along social class lines, with a growing share of low-income high school graduates choosing two-year community colleges over four-year universities, a recent report shows.
Thomas Mortenson, a higher education policy analyst who runs an organization called Postsecondary Education Opportunity, recently documented the trend by looking at where high school graduates receiving Pell Grants choose to attend college. Federal Pell Grants are awarded to students from lower-income families on the basis of economic need.
Mortenson found the share of Pell Grant recipients nationwide enrolled in public or private four-year colleges dropped from 60 percent in the 1970s to a record low of 44 percent in 2007-08, though rates vary widely among states. About 52 percent of Oregon Pell Grant recipients attended a public or private four-year college in 2007-08.
The trend, writes Mortenson in a report released last month, is the result not only of recession but also of states shifting more of the burden for higher education to student tuition, and of financial aid for needy students failing to kept pace with tuition increases."