Colleges Slip on Pledge to Enroll Lower-Income Students
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Here's your Money Briefing for Friday, September 16th. I'm Daniela Cheslow for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whalen. For years, colleges have promised to increase the number of lower-income students enrolled at high-performing schools. More than 125 of them took a pledge to boost their numbers by 2025. But a new check-in shows they're coming up short.
This sort of initiative, increasing enrollment by lower-income students, is expensive for schools. And a lot of them have great intentions, but ultimately don't have the money to put behind a really robust financial aid package.
The Wall Street Journal's Melissa Korn has been looking into the numbers. And on today's show, she'll talk about what universities are doing to attract and retain low-income students and what is and isn't working. That's coming up after the break.
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What was the American Talent Initiative pledge made in 2016 and which schools joined?
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Back in 2016, U.S. colleges and universities signed onto the American Talent Initiative. It's a campaign with backers including Bloomberg and the Aspen Institute that aims to increase the number of lower-income students who enroll in high-performing schools. The goal is 50,000 more students within a decade. More than 125 schools signed the pledge, but A recent progress report shows the schools are running behind. They've added fewer than 8,000 lower-income students since the initiative began. Melissa Korn covers higher education for The Wall Street Journal. She's here now to explore why colleges are not hitting the targets they set. Hi, Melissa. Hi there. One of the key metrics in this study is Pell Grants.
What is a Pell Grant and who benefits from them?
A Pell Grant is a federal grant that students do not have to pay back. They are need-based and they generally go to students from families that earn fairly low incomes. It's used as a rough, not perfect, but useful proxy for lower income status of students. So why are Pell Grant numbers falling behind? The Pell Grant covers just a few thousand dollars and... Other college expenses generally run far higher than that at both public and private four-year universities. And as families' budgets tightened during the pandemic, a lot of lower-income students put their college plans on hold, if not walking away from them entirely. The other factor here is this sort of initiative, increasing enrollment by lower income students, is expensive for schools.
And a lot of them have great intentions, but ultimately don't have the money to put behind a really robust financial aid package that can bridge that gap between what the Pell Grant covers and full cost.
This figure of fewer than 8,000 lower income students on a pledge of 50,000, that is a quite striking figure. Where do you see in particular the numbers not bearing out the intentions of the pledge?
So one of the really interesting things from the progress report was just how varied the success stories and less successful stories maybe. There are large public universities that are doing really well that have added thousands of low income and lower income students over the past few years.
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