Bridging the Income Barrier at Top Colleges

The Hamilton Project, a Washington group affiliated with the Brookings Institution, has released a report calling for the expansion of a recent experiment aimed at persuading highly qualified low-income students to apply to top colleges.

Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country's 238 most selective colleges in a recent year, according to research conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard. Among top students in the highest income quartile, the figure was 78 percent.

The experiment intended to chang e the situation, conducted by Ms. Hoxby and Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia, mailed information packets about colleges mostly to high-performing, lower-income students. The packets included information on financial aid, admissions standards and graduation rates. Students who received the information were substantially more likely to attend top colleges - colleges with more resources and higher graduation rates - than students who did not receive them.

The Hamilton Project argues for an outside group, like the College Board, to help expand the experiment. It also suggested varying it â€" sending the information earlier than the senior year of high school, for instance â€" and allowing researchers to study its effectiveness.

In making its case, the group presented a series of charts on inequality and education in the United States. One notes that the cognitive ability of very young children does not differ much across income groups, suggesting there is a large pool of untapped academic talent among poorer children:

The Hamilton Project Source: Fryer and Levitt (2013); authors' calculations. Note: Bars show the effect of regression estimates of socioeconomic status on standardized m ental function composite score in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, controlling for race, age, and home environment. Hollow bars are statistically insignificant at the 5 percent level.

But the differences across income groups in how much parents spend on their children's educational enrichment have grown significantly in recent decades:

The Hamilton Project Source: Duncan and Murnane (2011).

Those growing gaps have helped increase the gaps in school performance by income group …

The Hamilton Project Source: Reardon (2011). Note: Figure shows best-fit estimate from the 12 nationally representative studies available that include family income and standardized test scores.

… and cause top colleges to be filled overwhelmingly with upper-income students:

The Hamilton Project Source: Carnevale and Strohl (2010). Note: Figure shows college attendance as of 2006.

The fact that so few low-income students attend top colleges is especially important because many nonselective colleges have low graduation rates. And a college degree remains the most reliable escape route from poverty:

The Hamilton Project Source: Haskins (2008). Note: Calculations are based on the PSID, which compares children's adult income at roughly age 40 with that of their parents at about the same age.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 26, 2013

An earlier version of this post omitted a word, misstating the finding of a chart about the cognitive ability of very young children. It showed that such ability does not differ much across income groups.