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Schools ranked by % of students receiving Pell grants (JBHE)
| Marvelous effete gas station | 04/15/10 |
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Date: April 15th, 2010 10:58 PM Author: Marvelous effete gas station Subject: From the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: "The latest data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that low-income students have a small presence on the campuses of most of the nation’s highest-ranked universities. At the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles, low-income students make up more than 31 percent of all students. At none of the other universities ranked in the top 30 academically in the nation do low-income students make up as much as 17 percent of the student body.
Among the 30 highest-ranked universities, Washington University in St. Louis has the lowest percentage of students who receive Pell Grants. Wake Forest University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Notre Dame all have student bodies where less than 9 percent receive Pell Grants.
In the Ivy League, Columbia leads the way. At Columbia, 15.9 percent of the undergraduates received federal Pell Grants. Harvard is close behind at 15 percent. The University of Pennsylvania has the smallest percentage of low-income students in the Ivy League.
But the question is, Have these new financial aid programs been successful in increasing the number of low-income students on the campuses of our nation’s highest-ranked universities? A reasonable person would conclude that because these universities have made the cost of higher education more affordable for low-income students there would be a growing, if not surging, body of low-income students on these campuses. But this has not been the case.
A 2007 JBHE study found that at 25 of the 30 highest-ranked universities the percentage of the student body that came from low-income families declined from the 2003-04 academic year to the 2006-07 academic year. Remember that this was in a period when these universities had revamped their financial aid programs to make them more attractive to low-income students.
But finally these efforts to attract more low-income students seem to be having a positive impact. Since our last report 23 of the nation’s 30 highest-ranked universities have shown an increase in their percentage of low-income students. Two universities had the same percentage as was the case two years ago and only five showed a decline in the percentage of low-income students. The largest gains were at Harvard University, Emory University, MIT, and Stanford University.
Over a longer, five-year period from the 2003-04 academic year to the 2008-09 academic year, only seven of the top 30 universities have shown an increase in low-income students. Harvard shows the largest gain. In 2004, 9.4 percent of Harvard undergraduates were from low-income families. During the 2008-09 academic year, the figure had increased to 15 percent. Princeton, MIT, and Emory University also posted significant gains over the five-year period."
See chart: http://www.jbhe.com/features/65_pellgrants.html |