“Some 77% of students from wealthy families earned bachelor’s degrees by age 24 in 2013, compared to only 9% of those from poor families, a new report has found.” …
http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/04/news/economy/college-graduate-rich-poor/
$108k is “wealthy”?
It’s like twice the median family income. Double.
Twice the median doesn’t equate to “wealthy”. Dual-income school teachers can easily earn $108k. I think few rational people would lump them together with Warren Buffet.
Warren Buffett = “ultra-wealthy” or “uberwealthy”. I think they were just talking about plain wealthy.
The linked CNN article does not distinguish between the wealthy and the uber-wealthy. It treats every household above $108k the same.
The odds are overwhelming that they didn’t have any households in the study that were “uberwealthy”.
And that means, what? That these “rich” people should give their money to the poor to make it all fair?
My post means that, by probability, they didn’t have any uberwealthy households in the study, hence there was no need to distinguish between uberwealthy and simply wealthy.
Not sure what your post means. You’d have to explain yourself more fully.
Based on academic class models $108,000 would be classified as either upper middle class(William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, ) or Middle class(Leonard Beeghley,). The level right below would be lower middle class or working class. Neither would be defined as rich.
$108,000 is barely enough to survive near NYC, not even actually living in the city.
But what I would like to see, for every college, is statistics on the socioeconomic status, possibly as basic as “no loans” and “loans”, for who graduates in four years, who graduates in six years, and who doesn’t graduate.
To answer questions like:
- How many students do not graduate and have significant (more than $10,000 total) loans?
- What percentage of full pay students to eventually graduate?
- What support services are available for students who fail a class?
Where I work, we don’t even know who has failed the courses we teach previously, unless we actually look it up. If colleges wanted kids who were ill-prepared for college and have inadequate family support either monetarily or psychologically to get a degree, they would flag them upon their first “F” and make professors reach out to them instead of waiting for vice versa.
Darn straight they DO do that, and more, for Division 1 athletes.
Nobody in NYC lives on a salary less than $108,000? I don’t believe that’s true.
They might want to stop using terms like “wealthy” and instead use brackets that relate their household income to the cost of living where they reside. Like, "Household income is 0-.5 * local COL for a family of 4, (= “low income”), 0.5-1.5 * (= “middle income”), 1.5 - 3 *(= “upper income”), > 3 * (= “elite income”). The numbers are arbitrary, but the point is to give context.
A second thing they should consider is picking breakpoints according to the population they are considering. Instead of taking twice the median US family income as “wealthy”, perhaps they should take twice the median family income of college students. If half of all students come families with incomes above that, that becomes the median, not a sign of wealth at all.
I think people are missing the point by fixating on the definition of wealthy. Use the word “affluent” or “comfortable” if the word “wealthy” disturbs you. Poor is defined as earning less than $34,000. The point being if you come from a family whose income is less than $34,000 (so that $108,000 non-wealthy family earns THREE times the amount), you aren’t likely to graduate from college at all for a myriad of reasons.
Some things:
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“Wealthy” in most contexts is subjective. Any time you attach a certain dollar amount to the term “wealthy”, you will get push back from someone. $108,000 isn’t all that much in the Washington, DC area, but it’s a lot in Phoenix, Arizona. Just depends where you live. Some kids coming out of college with student loan debt and a job that pays $35,000 a year might consider $108,000 to not only be wealthy but well over the line they would consider wealthy. I remember 30 years ago in college when the father of a college friend of mine stated that doctors shouldn’t be considered wealthy because many of them made “only” $100,000 a year. Again, this was 30 years ago and in Ohio. I thought he was crazy then (and actually that still was pretty good money then in Ohio).
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Individuals may qualify themselves as wealthy depending on their place in life (asset to debt ratio or age) rather than how much money they make. If I make $108,000 a year at age 48 with two kids at home and a mortgage and college expenses looming, I might not consider myself wealthy. If the kids are grown and gone, the house is paid off, I have no other debt and a million dollars in my retirement account giving me $40,000 a year in income added to another $40,000 from Social Security for my wife and me at age 65, I might consider that to be wealthy even with just $80,000 a year in income.
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To get to the point, the writer of the article could have just said “those with household incomes above $108,650” instead of qualifying that number as “wealthy”.
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The intent of the article is to show the difference in graduation rates between rich and poor (or the have-a-littles and the poor). But, it also mentions that more poor people are entering college than ever before. The problem is that a lot of them are not getting degrees. To me, this is not a surprise. There are different expectations on children from wealthy families than there are on poor families. I grew up the first half of my childhood with poor people, and as my father’s career escalated and my mother finished her degree and started working, we moved on up (to a deluxe apartment in the sky!). Suddenly I was surrounded by kids from wealthier families. The discussions were much different. What math class are you in? Who got the best grade in your science class? What do you want to major in in college? What college do you want to go to? NONE of this was talked about before in the poorer neighborhood…not even among the juniors and seniors. Discussions were always about where to find a job or what branch of the military to go into. Now, when more and more poor kids are entering college, if they struggle a bit, it’s not a big deal to many of them at home if they drop out and go find a job. Not so for families of professional people who make a little bit more money. I remember calling my father toward the end of my first semester of college. I had a D in Psychology going into the final. He was adamant that I could NOT have a D on my college transcript. Scared me a bit. Studied my butt off and got a 97 on the final and ended up with a B in the class. My expectation had been set, and I never put myself in that position again.
@SlackerMomMD…so what’s the big revelation? You can apply this to almost anything…8x more likely to own a fancy home, expensive car, take exotic vacations, stay at 5 star hotels etc…if you are “rich” lol.
I agree with @SlackerMomMD. People got completely off track from the point by focusing on the poor choice of the word “wealthy”, and, by the way, the word poor is just as ambiguous. It would have been much more meaningful if they had simply said “Some 77% of students from families with gross incomes greater than $108,650 earned bachelor’s degrees by age 24 in 2013, compared to only 9% of those from families with gross incomes of less than $34,160, a new report has found.” Let’s pretend they had said it that way and get off of what makes one wealthy or uber-wealthy, or for that matter poor.
@moscott, with all due respect I think you really miss the point. Obviously with things that simply cost money like a big home or fancy car the people that earn more will have those things in greater proportion. But this is about what percentage go to and finish college (especially note finish) by age 24. As the articles says, the percentage difference of those going to college right out of high school from these two income groups is not that stark, 90% to 62%. So clearly the bigger issue is finishing with ones degree.
It is far more complicated, not to mention impactful, than staying in a nice hotel, or taking a vacation at all. Given the importance of a college degree to moving from one socio-economic stratum to another, this is a very important issue. Plus no one gives Pell Grants and need-based aid to people to buy a car or go on vacation. There are avenues for these students from low-income backgrounds to attend college. It might not be the more expensive private schools in many cases, or even most cases, but there are affordable avenues to getting those degrees. Especially if those students do well in high school, which is of course available to all at no cost.
Now I completely understand the underlying issues involved in those statements (by which I mean I understand they exist, not how to solve them), but that is exactly what studies like this are meant to highlight and spark more discussions about. To bring even more light to those issues through better statistics. It may or may not be a big revelation, but it certainly isn’t as simplistic as you make it sound. At the very least, it would seem to say we should focus our efforts on keeping those that start college in college, as opposed to getting them to start college in the first place. That we should focus on finding out the most important reasons that cause them to drop out and not finish by age 24, which for most would be the 6 year graduation rate, a common measure for better or worse. I would dare say that prior to this study, that might not have been obvious at all to many decision makers in the higher education world and the politicians that control a lot of this as well.
@fallenchemist
- There are PLENTY of government programs to help.
- So many issues that apply that don't simply cost money where the 8x likely would apply. Such as unemployment, crime, alcohol and substance abuse, accidents due to unsafe working environments, water and food related diseases, poor health, poor hygiene, all the way up to more likely to be injured in a car accident.
@moscott
That is true to some extent, although those aren’t the examples you gave. I also wouldn’t say welfare checks and food stamps or other government programs targeted at those earning less than $34,000 are likely to give people access to big homes, fancy cars and 5 star hotels. I completely don’t understand your second point. As I said quite clearly, the ratio of people starting college is 3:2, while the ratio of those finishing is 8:1. If the reasons that is true correlate to the reasons for those things you list, then fine. That would be interesting to know and could help lead to better answers to the problem. I find that to be unlikely for most of your examples, but hey. More surprising things have been discovered after the research is done. But that is all speculation at this point and off topic, other than being a next step in the research.
I think you are bringing up apples when we are talking about vegetables. Let’s stick to what this study appears to have factually found, which is that at the age of 18-19 (for the most part) the ratio of those in higher education is 3:2, and that by the age of 24 the ratio of those that have completed the degree program is 8:1. If that happens to be the same ratio at the age of 24 as unemployment or the crime rate or poor hygiene, then that is more likely a coincidence since those ratios were very unlikely to have started out at 18 as 3:2, and I can see no way that observation contributes to this conversation in a useful manner. Not to mention it isn’t really an observation on your part, but a guess. You have no idea what those ratios are, but even if you did they are irrelevant to this subject.
I’m sure they’re also less likely to GO to college in the first place. I think “wealth” is only one factor; there are others:
- Parental education level, parental emphasis on academics & higher education and related values, home & neighborhood environment.
- Negative peer influence: Many kids in East Palo Alto (poor, high crime, gang shootings) attend school in adjacent Palo Alto (different city, different universe). yet, once these kids get to middle and high school, many of them fall into the same cycle of bad behavior, suspension, detention, drugs, violence outside of school, juvie, etc. Problem is, they go home to EPA where parents are working multiple minimum-wage jobs with no benefits, and random shifts to make ends meet. No supervision, no safety. No one cares.
- These parents and kids also think college is a long shot because they always hear how unaffordable it is (and it is), and many don’t realize how much financial aid is available. Heck, I am not looking forward to college applications for my kids. It is a painful process.
- Teacher/societal expectations and confidence in the abilities of these students are also lower, on average. That’s not always justified. The educators in my family are disturbed by the attitudes they witness among many co-workers and administrators. Regardless of what some people like to say, race and ethnicity absolutely plays a role. When teachers look at my kid (Asian), they see overachiever who is good at math. On the other hand, when they see certain other kids, they perceive something different. These are stereotypes that send the wrong message, and the media and lack of role models do not help things.
The other day, I was going through my Flipboard news articles on my Android. When I came to an article about two college boys convicted of rape of a classmate, I saw the cover photo of a black football player in court. Nothing new. Then I drilled into the details and read the article. Towards the end of the article, I saw a similar photos of a white athlete, also in court - who happened to be the ringleader. This character egged on the other guys and shot the video (while raping, laughing, drinking, and watching). Okay, so why wasn’t his photo on the cover? Subtle messages. When a pretty blonde girl is abducted, her story and face are splashed all over CNN. I feel sorry for the African-American mothers who are sobbing and wondering where their little girls are, and why their lives are not valued in the same way. All kids are equally important, are they not? Or are they?
Clarence Thomas and political conservatives love to talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. “If I could do it, why can’t those crackhead, gang-banger, welfare kids?” Wonderful in theory. My immigrant parents came to the US with nothing in their pockets too. They did, however, have their degrees, career ambition, and a cultural emphasis on academics. Each of the above problems, if taken in isolation, may have solutions on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, when you combine all of these factors, you make the obstacles on the path to success insurmountable for most disadvantaged kids. That’s why you have the “achievement gap.” They can’t do it alone. They need help, and as they say, it takes a village. Sadly, our village is too busy fighting over petty things when they’re not watching reality shows about the Kardashians, shopping at the mall, or checking their Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Dang, Kim K. manages to get into every conversation. She really will break the internet.)