What Elite Colleges Can Do to Increase Opportunity

The summer is just beginning, and already Steven Brill’s book “Tailspin” promises to be one of the provocative nonfiction titles of the season, with a lengthy excerpt recently published in TIME and a strong endorsement from New York Times columnist David Brooks. Picking up on the themes of one of last summer’s talked-about books — Richard Reeves’ “Dream Hoarders” — Brill chronicles the ways in which a meritocratic elite class elevates its own position and amplifies economic inequality, in part by passing on exclusive educational opportunities to its children. This narrative from both Brill and Reeves is echoed in the pioneering analytical work by economist Raj Chetty, who has shown that high-quality higher education can be an upward path for many, but that many elite colleges and universities fail to offer opportunities to low- and middle-income families, effectively securing the positions of the wealthier meritocrats.

I was one of those students who found economic upward mobility through study at elite institutions: I was able to attend Swarthmore with assistance from a federal Pell Grant (as well as generous institutional support), and later earned a doctorate at Stanford with the support of a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. I have no doubt that the quality of education I received at Swarthmore and Stanford, combined with the power of credentials from those institutions, helped to open many doors that led me to my current position as president of another elite institution, Kenyon College.

And from my current position, I have an up-close vantage point into the challenge of creating opportunity for students from low- and middle-income backgrounds with demonstrated academic talent and potential to have a Kenyon experience as a path for upward mobility. Kenyon was one of the institutions highlighted in a recent column by the New York Times’ David Leonhardt as a college where students from families in the top 1 percent of the nation’s income distribution outnumber students from families in the bottom 60 percent. Roughly 10 percent of Kenyon students come from families at or below the median U.S. family income level (approximately the income range eligible for a Pell Grant).

Those talented students are very successful at Kenyon. Kenyon’s graduation rate for its Pell-eligible students regularly tracks just as high, if not higher, than it does for the entirety of its student body — a remarkable achievement, given the gap in completion rates that typically is wider for lower-income students. Even after graduation, our students thrive; nearly three-quarters of students in Kenyon’s Class of 2017 reported being employed or accepted to graduate school prior to graduation, and a 2013 survey of alumni who conducted research with a faculty member between 2003 and 2013 showed 83 percent had continued on to graduate work or jobs in a field related to their major. Low- and middle-income students thrive at Kenyon; but, how can we bring more of them to our campus?

Kenyon has joined 99 other colleges and universities in the American Talent Initiative, a coalition of schools that are working together to expand access to higher education. This collaboration among all types of schools — public, private, research, liberal arts and more — is particularly powerful, not only for the message it sends to the nation on institutional priorities, but also for the lessons that coalition members can learn from each other on how to better recruit, retain and advance lower-income students. And crucially, the coalition only includes institutions with remarkably high graduation rates — an indicator of healthy mentorship and support programs on those campuses to help students complete what they set out to accomplish.

What are some lessons that Kenyon and others are learning from the work on ATI?

Need-based financial aid is critical, but not sufficient.

The first step to bringing lower-income students to elite campuses is to provide strong need-based financial aid packages, and to commit to supporting students throughout their undergraduate education. This requires a commitment at all levels of the institution to prioritize need-based financial aid in the budgeting process, including reallocation of resources from other institutional needs. Moving the needle to increase financial access is expensive: A full-tuition scholarship to Kenyon for one student is about $50,000, or the equivalent of $1 million in endowment support. But financial aid alone does not address the full issue. Students may face many hidden financial barriers on their paths to success, ranging from the costs of textbooks and supplies that may deter students from some majors, to the costs of family emergencies or emergency travel, or clothing for job interviews. Evaluation of financial barriers to student entry and success must be holistic.

High-impact experiences are important but not necessarily equally accessible.

Internships, study-abroad, and research opportunities have all been demonstrated to both deepen student learning and help college students sort through career possibilities before graduation. Indeed, these are the opportunities which give students both the intellectual breadth and the social networking experiences that propel students in postgraduate life, and for low-income or first-generation students, these strengthen the opportunities for economic mobility. But some internships are unpaid, or paid at a level of support inadequate to cover expected summer earnings requirements for financial aid. Undergraduate research opportunities may compete for time with paid work-study jobs. Study abroad, even when supported by institutional financial aid, may seem inaccessible to low-income students. Even as we strengthen curricula to incorporate more high-impact practices, we must be cognizant of these inequities and design our programs to include opportunities for all students to thrive.

Campus culture must be inclusive to all students.

Even as institutions identify and tackle financial barriers to greater socioeconomic diversity, we must address an even more daunting task: cultivating an inclusive campus culture, where everyone feels they can belong. Discussing socioeconomic class is difficult, especially when students are trying to forge relationships across a campus community. But guiding conversations about class remains just as necessary for schools as shepherding conversations about race, or gender, or religion on campus. Institutions play a crucial role in addressing this divide in life experiences, as a school’s leadership, faculty and staff largely set initial expectations for a student body and provide an aspirational model. It is not enough to merely bring more lower-income students to campuses like Kenyon’s; we must also make sure they feel at home and want to stay enrolled.

While the rise of meritocracy-driven elite education may have contributed to the social, cultural and political tailspin that inspired the title of Brill’s book, colleges and universities are also the potential engines for the long-term actions needed to address socioeconomic inequality. Increasing socioeconomic diversity at our nation’s colleges and universities and building more inclusive campuses is vital work, necessary for promoting a healthy society. At a moment in time when colleges and universities are under the microscope, and when the cost and relevance of higher education is increasingly scrutinized by families and policymakers alike, we must do the work required to open up pathways of opportunity in our institutions.

Sean Decatur is the 19th president of Kenyon College. Follow his writing here or on Kenyon’s website.