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Advocate Online
In the Know
Access for Low-Income Students
A college education continues to be
prohibitively expensive for low-income students at most private and many
public colleges and universities.
A student's opportunity to afford and to
attend college varies greatly from state to state, according to a recent
report from the Lumina Foundation for Education. And, reports Unequal
Opportunity: Disparities in College Access Among the 50 States, the
combination of federal, state, and institutional financial aid in some
states is not enough to make college affordable for low-income students.
The Lumina Foundation for Education's study
ranked 2,887 degree-granting colleges by state according to their admissibility
and affordability. The two measures—admissibility: whether a college
admits typical college-bound students—and affordability: whether
such students can afford to attend—were combined to get an institution's
level of accessibility. "An accessible institution is one that college-qualified
students are academically and financially able to attend," according
to Samuel M. Kipp III, the lead researcher and co-author of the report.
One of the best indicators of a state's
accessibility is the extent to which public two- and four-year institutions
are available for in-state residents. According to the report, more than
one-fourth of the public institutions in 16 states are inaccessible to
college-bound students. On the brighter side, in 14 states and the District
of Columbia at least 90 percent of the public institutions are accessible
to low-income students.
The report also finds that fewer than 100
of the nation's 1,500 private colleges are affordable and available to
a low-income student. Even though, in 1999-2000, private institutions
provide $8 billion in student aid—more than all federal and state
grant aid combined—the Lumina Foundation report questions whether
the financial awards are reaching low-income students.
The report's findings, revealing the lack
of accessible higher education options for low-income students, have major
implications for policy-makers and leaders in higher education, say the
report's authors.
Notes Jerry Davis, Lumina Foundation vice
president for research, "American higher education remains the key
to a vital democracy and the opportunity of its people;" therefore,
"we must work together to keep higher education accessible to all
Americans."
A copy of the report and a summary of its
findings are available on the Lumina Foundation Web site: www.luminafoundation.org.
For a free copy, E-mail pgriffin@lumina.org.
| From The
Lectern |
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I look
forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will
be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians
or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into
full realization the American Dream—a dream yet unfulfilled.
A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely
distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities
from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where
men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determine the
content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts
and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments
of services for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where
every man will respect the dignity and work of the human personality.
That is the dream...
—Rev.
Martin Luther King, AFL-CIO Convention, 1961
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