The Missing Middle Class on College Campuses
Jeff Selingo
Bestselling author | Strategic advisor on future of learning and work | College admissions and early career expert | Contributor, The Atlantic | Angel investor | Editor, Next newsletter | Co-host, FutureU podcast
The beginning of May was the deadline for the last of high-school seniors to make their final decision about where they’re going to college next fall. For some it was a sprint to the finish as they weighed the social and academic fit of campuses still on their list, but also the all-important financial aid offers from colleges.
I heard about the agony of the decision-making process from some of them in e-mail messages asking for advice or as I traveled the country in recent weeks to speak at high schools about the admissions process and how to succeed as an undergraduate. A few described their financial situation in detail, while others talked about their “middle-class backgrounds,” with jobs as school teachers, firefighters, or supermarket managers. As personal financial columnist Ron Lieber wrote recently about middle-class families—and their angst in paying for college—“nobody sympathizes with them much, and they do not ask for you to do so” given the difficulties that low-income families have in paying for college.
The amount of unmet need for middle-income students is some $10,000 a year, nearly as much as the lowest-income families in the United States.
Indeed, much attention has been given recently to the struggles of low-income students. Research shows that as family income rises so do the chances of not only going to college but also completing a degree. But as college prices continue to rise faster than the income levels of many Americans, it begs the question: what happens to those families just on the other side of the low-income cutoff for many financial aid programs?
The proxy often used for the enrollment of low-income students is the percentage of students eligible for the federal Pell Grant. The income ceiling for Pell Grants is not a fixed number, however, as a student’s eligibility depends on household size and other factors. In general, Pell Grants go to families making less than $50,000. The dollar amount of the Pell Grant is also not fixed, as students receive varying amounts up to the annual maximum -- $5,920 for the 2017-18 school year.
The students and families I’ve heard from recently are in the income bands just above the Pell Grant cutoff, between $50,000 and $100,000. According to federal statistics, their amount of unmet need—the difference between what a college costs and what a student can afford to pay—is some $10,000 a year, nearly as much as the lowest-income families in the United States.
“They are getting squeezed on both ends because they barely miss Pell Grants and they are not the types of students getting grants from colleges themselves,” said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University and an expert on student aid.
This trend has manifested itself on college campuses in the form of a socioeconomic “barbell”—with affluent students who can pay full price or close to it on one end and poor students who receive federal Pell Grants and max out their loan eligibility on the other end. Fewer students are in the middle, especially on the lower end of that middle just above the cutoff for Pell Grants.
For years, merit aid has helped colleges maintain the middle class on their campuses by giving institutions the flexibility to spread aid around to many students in the form of scholarships, while at the same time pulling in some tuition revenue from those students. But as tuition prices have climbed, colleges found they were discounting their tuition too much and their net tuition revenue—the amount of cash actually received from students or their outside aid—was flat or declining. So they moved their merit aid up the income scale in order to capture students, and more revenue, from higher-income families.
“We need to expand opportunity and aid policies for both Pell students and for middle-income students who are not Pell-eligible,” said Daniel R. Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College, and a national leader on improving financial aid for low-income students.
A few years ago, F&M undertook an ambitious strategy to eliminate merit scholarships to better target its financial aid at needy students. F&M received plenty of national attention for the effort, but press coverage focused mostly on how the college was able to boost the percentage of freshmen on Pell Grants from 17 percent in 2012 to 19 percent in 2016.
For too many colleges, financial aid has become a recruitment and enrollment management tool rather than an affordability mechanism.
What wasn’t mentioned as often was “how we also increased the number of students from middle-income families,” Porterfield told me. The proportion of freshmen at F&M from families earning between $50,000 and $90,000 increased from 9 percent in 2012 to 13 percent in 2016, while the percentage of freshmen from families making more than $150,000 fell 9 percent to about 40 percent of the incoming class.
Many college leaders, however, claim they can’t afford to dedicate the needed dollars to financial aid for both low-income and middle-income families. “It’s a false choice to claim they can’t invest in both,” Porterfield said.
The issue is that some colleges don’t want to pay for such investments by taking away aid from higher income students who enroll only because they are enticed with generous packages. For too many colleges, financial aid has become a recruitment and enrollment management tool rather than an affordability mechanism.
The problem with that approach is that pool of students at the lower and middle portions of the income scale are growing, while those at the top are shrinking. Median per capita income in the U.S. has basically flat lined since 2000, when adjusted for inflation. The typical American family makes slightly less than a typical family did 15 years ago. And while many products have become less expensive in that time, the price tag of three of the biggest expenditures made by middle-class families— housing, college tuition, and health care—have risen much faster than the rate of inflation.
If colleges don’t begin to also focus on middle-income families, they will end up with campuses bifurcated by income that don’t reflect the economic diversity of the United States.
Jeffrey Selingo is author of There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow. You can follow his writing here, on Twitter @jselingo, on Facebook, and sign up for free newsletters about the future of higher education at jeffselingo.com.
He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s Grade Point blog, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities.
Cross-posted from The Washington Post
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3 年HI Eileen , I agree college costs are crazy. Some of college was a great deal of fun I recognized your picture right away Or I need a cat Scan right away at Johns Hopkins John King
Disabled but that doesn't keep me from reaching my dreams.
7 年I study mathematics and physics. I am poor so I get the Pell and Texas grants, sometimes other grants. I also apply for merit based scholarships not just in the department I am in but also outside scholarships as well. I also read the education code and am eligible for certain waivers. I don't take out loans because I get just barely enough to pay the ridiculous tuition. I live off disability which is almost damned near impossible. I also conduct research on top of work study. I am happy to have the opportunity to go to university. I also know how lucky I am to not have student loan debt. Figuring out how to pay what government grants don't cover is very difficult and stress inducing, but I do it to stay out of debt. There have been close calls where I almost had to take out a loan. Some scary times! And I practically live in the hospital because of all my illnesses. But I will still work on my school work and fax everything to my professors so that I stay ahead and don't get behind. I have no life outside of school. But I am getting what I need to get done by just barely scraping by. All I'm just saying that it's not easy for us low income students to cover the full cost of tuition, rent, and food with or without loans. And I see my middle income student peers stressing about all the student loans they have and not getting scholarships. I agree that the system is broken and needs to change. First thing I would do is to get rid of all the unnecessary admins and focus on learning and research. I believe there is a giant bubble and when a certain amount of students default on their student loans then the bubble will burst and a recession will follow. So it's better this problem gets fixed sooner rather than later.
Coach / Teacher at S.A. I. S. D.
7 年I'm 2 years away from my children starting college and I am still paying off my own student loan debt! The middle is most definitely in a squeeze.
Project Administrator at DES Architects + Engineers
7 年I'm always struck by how the analyses of financial aid only consider tuition and completely ignore the very significant costs of living that must also be met. Full-time students work hard to do all their coursework, and even with 12 hours of minimum wage work in the library or cafeteria it's impossible to pay the RENT. To me these charts and figures are just another example of how out-of-touch the educational institutions are. If helping students was really the goal, the calculations would consider all living costs and aid would be provided to help cover them too. The fact that they don't shows that the institution's bottom line is really what's paramount, and students are really just revenue-producing farm animals to serve that bottom line. The permanent lifetime indentureship of ever increasing college loans to pay ever increasing non-market-responsive prices, only solidifies that truth. It's no wonder the middle & working classes, always mindful of their budget and good shoppers for bargains, are starting to resist. Good luck with your increasingly isolated population of wealthy elites only.
Datwani Management
7 年My recent question after hearing student's plans: "how can anyone study to be a teacher or lawyer who advocates for the poor or other redeeming careers that actually make a difference to the mid/lower class when you will never make enough to pay off the loan you needed to get educated for the career you want? " HOW can students cross state lines and pay double PLUS to attend a school that has their major? The entire system is broken and will take a crash to go thru the rubble and rebuild better...