I wonder if this can be correlated with financial aid:
But the article does note that lower income HS grads who do not go to college are less likely to be employed and more likely to be unemployed then those from lower middle income families.
So increased college attendance may be driven by the low income HS grads’ poor job prospects without college.
I think they need to study it further. It would be a real sign (or at least a good indicator) of a broken need based financial aid system if middle income students are squeezed out for lower income. And would validate what many have been saying for a while.
@Portercat I don’t think the data is supporting that. Those that feel the “squeeze” would have incomes over 100k and 82% of that group is enrolled in college vs 63%, 60%, and 71% for the lower income categories.
One group that is indeed squeezed quite hard includes students whose parents own a small business, farm, or rental property. I know quite a few people who own farms. The ones in the US (about half of the ones that I know) are squeezed out of most (or nearly all) schools. The ones in Canada (the other half) have no trouble sending their kids to whichever good school fits them.
Of the people that I know who own farms, none of them are actually able to make enough to live off of farming. All have at least one spouse with a “real” job. However, the farm shows up as an asset on the NPC. Also, about half are on a family farm that has been in the family since 1900 (in one case since the 1630’s), so selling the family farm would not go over well.
Most would be called middle income.
I suspect that plenty of CC members will discount this study because they feel they belong in the middle class instead of the wealthy class, although they are earning $100K.
@planner03 , the data is showing that for the first time, students in the bottom 20% of income levels are attending college at a higher rate than the middle 60% of students. Both significantly trail the upper 20%…
from the article,
The confusion stems from the article’s inclusion of a line chart using quintiles, followed by a horizontal bar chart using quartiles.
I think @Portercat is absolutely right to consider that this points to a broken need based financial aid, with the larger middle starting to get squeezed out by the lower.
Important to keep in mind that this is among those who complete high school. Middle income kids finish at significantly higher rates than low income kids.
I’m 100% free-to-students college access like the rest of the developed world. Nothing about this data suggests that this is because of a financial aid problem. It could be, but this doesn’t show that… at all.
Other possible explanations:
-Thanks to the economic upswing, those in that middle-ish income might be able to get their kids jobs at the companies they work at in a way they couldn’t for the last decade. Very economically depressed areas still have very poor economic prospects so this is less likely to be the case there.
-Trend towards the trades.
-Increase in college prep counselors (or equivalent) in poor school districts that are encouraging more kids to go to college (remember, it’s ALWAYS been the case that a large % of low income students don’t know about pell and other programs). This isn’t causing more students than in the middle class to go to college, but since fewer poor kids finish high school, the numbers look higher.
In the low income district I grew up in, the idea “I can’t go to college so why bother finishing high school?” was rampant. It wouldn’t surprise me if that mentality is still there.