New Repor Offers Plans to Help Low-Income Students Succeed in College
Over the last several years, new policies have been enacted to make higher education more equitable. Roughly 100 colleges and universities have reached out to lower and moderate-income students with more generous financial aid packages. Likewise, the Obama Administration has recently boosted funding for Pell Grants and community colleges. But are these and other efforts to increase equity in higher education working?
"Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College," a new book from The Century Foundation, examines two strategies to increase socioeconomic diversity: better financial aid programs and admissions policies that level the playing field for hard working, economically disadvantaged students of all races. This report follows a 2004 Century Foundation study, America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education, which found that, at selective universities and colleges, 74 percent of students come from the richest quarter of the socioeconomic population and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter. Moreover, it comes at a time when a new legal challenge to racial preferences at the University of Texas may be headed to the Supreme Court, which is prompting new discussions about the future of affirmative action and what alternative forms it may take in coming years.
"Rewarding Strivers" is edited by Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a highly regarded expert on education policy. Included in the volume are:
- "How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It," by Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl of Georgetown University. This research updates and expands Carnevale's controversial "strivers"
"Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College," a new book from The Century Foundation, examines two strategies to increase socioeconomic diversity: better financial aid programs and admissions policies that level the playing field for hard working, economically disadvantaged students of all races. This report follows a 2004 Century Foundation study, America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education, which found that, at selective universities and colleges, 74 percent of students come from the richest quarter of the socioeconomic population and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter. Moreover, it comes at a time when a new legal challenge to racial preferences at the University of Texas may be headed to the Supreme Court, which is prompting new discussions about the future of affirmative action and what alternative forms it may take in coming years.
"Rewarding Strivers" is edited by Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a highly regarded expert on education policy. Included in the volume are:
- "How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It," by Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl of Georgetown University. This research updates and expands Carnevale's controversial "strivers"
