Dive Brief:
- A report from The Education Trust examining student performance at 1,500 private and public nonprofit colleges has found sometimes sizable gaps in graduation rates between students who receive Pell Grants and those who do not.
- Inside Higher Ed reports the national graduation rate for Pell Grant recipients is 14% behind their peers, and at about one-third of campuses, the spread is 9% or more.
- Schools with similar sets of incoming students can have very different graduation rates based on Pell status, including the University of Michigan and the University of Alabama, where Pell recipients are far more likely to graduate from the former.
Dive Insight:
More than a third of schools in the study had a gap of less than three percentage points between Pell Grant recipient graduation rates and those of their peers. The national average, however, reflects the fact that Pell recipients often go to lower-performing schools that have lower graduation rates overall. The report also lends support to the idea that student performance is about more than just inputs. How colleges serve their students matters.