Dive Brief:
- While there is now a smaller gap in high school graduation rates for high- and low-income students than a few decades ago, NYU researchers have identified growing gaps in college enrollment between the two groups.
- The NYU Steinhardt study, published in AERA Open, extended the research period from a 2014 study that found college attendance was constant across income levels for children born between 1971 and 1986, noting increasing enrollment gaps and strong evidence of growing gaps in graduation rates.
- The increasing gap was limited to four-year graduation rates, and researchers expect that could represent differences in persistence or financial needs that send low-income students to two-year colleges.
Dive Insight:
Validation of the 2014 research showing decreasing gaps in high school graduation across income groups is important. However, degree inflation has accompanied this shift in attainment rates. Now, when low-income students seem to be catching up to their higher-income peers in high school graduation, a high school degree is less useful in the workplace than ever. For the higher education business model, greater proportions of high school students graduating would indicate a growing number of prospective college students. However in much of the country, that is not true either. Population declines among this next generation means competition for graduates is fierce. Many colleges are addressing persistence gaps across income groups with targeted interventions, ensuring greater access to higher education correlates with greater success in it.