(2017-01-19) Americas Great Workingclass Colleges

America’s Great Working-Class Colleges - NYTimes.com

The most comprehensive study of college graduates yet conducted, based on millions of anonymous tax filings and financial-aid records

At City College, in Manhattan, 76 percent of students who enrolled in the late 1990s and came from families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have ended up in the top three-fifths of the distribution

Colleges ranked by percent of students from the bottom fifth of the income distribution who end up in the top three-fifths.

• 1. New Jersey Institute Of Technology 85% 2. Pace 82% 3. Cal State, Bakersfield 81% 4. University of California, Irvine 81% 5. Cal Poly Pomona 82% 6. Xavier, of Louisiana 80% 7. Stony Brook 79% 8. San Jose State 79% 9. Baruch 79% 10. Cal State, Long Beach 78%

Many colleges indeed fail to serve their students well. Dropout rates are high, saddling students with student loan debt but no college degree. For-profit colleges perform the worst, and a significant number of public colleges also struggle. Even at the strong performers, too many students fall by the wayside

There is a real problem with the elite privates and flagship publics in not serving as many low-income students as they should,” John B. King Jr., President Obama’s education secretary, told me. “These institutions have a moral and educational responsibility.”

The share of lower-income students at many public colleges has fallen somewhat over the last 15 years. The reason is clear. State funding for higher education has plummeted. It’s down 19 percent per student, adjusted for inflation, since 2008,

Change in per-student funding of higher education in the 15 largest states, 2008–2016

Obviously, colleges don’t deserve all the credit for their graduates’ success. But they do deserve a healthy portion of it.

The question is how to enable more working-class students do so.