Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence, and Success

2. Access, Matriculation, and Graduation

Chapter 2 Access, Matriculation, and Graduation ROBERT HAVEMAN AND KATHRYN WILSON T HE NATION’S higher education system—its colleges and universities— serve several functions. They house the nation’s most highly trained research teams in the nation’s most advanced facilities. They are the source of much of the nation’s technological advance, regardless of field or discipline.Theyoffertrainingandeducationtothenation’syouth.Inthislast role, colleges and universities create a skilled and knowledgeable work force—human capital—and thereby advance the nation’s productivity. Were these institutions an integral part of the market economy, they would sell their educational services to those families with young people who are willing to pay the most for them. And, as with boats, cars, and houses, the families with the greatest economic resources and the strongest tastes for advanced schooling for their children would purchase these services. Young people whose parents have high income and wealth and who (for whatever reason) value education highly would tend to populate the nation’s colleges and universities. The gains from education—higher incomes, prestigious occupations, economic, social, and political status— would flow to those whose families already have these characteristics. Colleges and universities would become instruments for the intergenerational perpetuation of riches, prestige, and power. However, historically, American universities and colleges have sought to avoid this market-oriented niche. Because of the unmarketed, external, and public goods effects of college-trained youth,1 third parties have also been given a stake in who is educated. As a result, collective action—often in the form of public policies—supplements private demands and choices. Moreover, higher education leaders view their institutions as more than the producers of services to be purchased by the highest bidder. Indeed, historically these leaders have seen the role of colleges and universities to identify the highest potential and most able of the nation’s youth, and to 17 advance their knowledge and training. In this view, colleges and universities are institutions that produce educational services to be allocated according to merit and not to market. An extreme form of this view sees colleges and universities as merit-oriented filters, working to counter the effects of the market and to promote intergenerational mobility. Hence, though colleges and universities charge tuitions, how their services are allocated is also influenced by a variety of public interventions. Some institutions are public: they receive public subsidies and set prices and ration services to meet collective goals, often expressed through the political system. These, and private ones as well, gain from publicly supported student subsidies, some of which are targeted to families with low incomes and limited ability to pay, and others are allocated to the students with the highest chances of success. Publicly subsidized loans are also available directly to students, their terms sometimes based on family economic resources. One important question concerns the extent to which colleges and universities have succeeded in their desire to promote merit, foster economic mobility, and serve youth from less advantaged families. Whence Cometh College Students? A number of scholars and government researchers have attempted to characterize the economic backgrounds of the population of young people with various levels of education—the population to whom the educational services of colleges and universities have been allocated. A National View Table 2.1 presents a good overview of the trends over time in terms of who goes to college (Ellwood and Kane 2000). It says little, however, about total years of completed schooling or college graduation. For the earlier cohort (the classes of 1980 through 1982), the overall rate of college-going is 80 percent for youths from the top quartile of families (ranked by income), versus 57 percent for their bottom quartile counterparts.2 Youths from the poorest families were concentrated in vocational and technical institutions, and those from the richest tended to enroll in four-year colleges . Over the ten years shown in the table, the overall enrollment rate rose by 7 percentage points. Whereas youths from the highest income families saw an increase of 10 percentage points, those from the lowest income families saw one of only 3 percentage points. In terms of attendance at four-year colleges, the gap between the highest and the lowest income youths increased far more than the overall gap in college going. The percentage of youths from the bottom quartile of families who enrolled in four-year colleges fell slightly (from 29 to 28 percent). That for youths 18 Economic Inequality and Higher Education [3.145.183...