Low Income Inequality In Higher Education Essay

In the United States, there are less low-income students admitted into universities and colleges than high-income students. Especially in the case of top-tier universities, students from well off families are better represented. This underrepresentation is largely due to the fact that poor and minority high schools tend to not prepare students for the admission process. One of the many implications is racial because of the correlation between certain races and income in America. Even if students with low-income backgrounds make it into a university, they are much more likely to dropout than students with high-income backgrounds. To reduce the connection between income disparity and postsecondary success, schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods need to focus more on preparing students for higher education and financial aid needs to be wisely distributed. The amount of students that are qualified for higher education is not shown by how many students are actually admitted because of the lack of low-income students. This means that universities and colleges are missing out on an entire demographic of capable students. According to Robert Haveman and Timothy Smeeding in The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility, “America’s top could enroll more moderate- and low-income

Because of the connection between a person’s income and race, “any increase in income gaps ought to be reflected in a widening of the racial gap” (Neckerman 321). Neckerman shows that there were racial gaps in postsecondary education success from 1972 to 1998. As shown in Figure 1, the percentage of students enrolled from eighteen to twenty-four years olds varied significantly by race. There was a gap between the percentages of white students enrolled and their black and Hispanic peers. These racial income gaps help illustrate how the postsecondary disparity in America is a result of income