David Leonhardt notes the complete lack of socioeconomic diversity at elite colleges:
In 2008, the most recent year in the Chronicle’s data, a mere 6.5 percent of Harvard students received Pell Grants. And Harvard wasn’t all that unusual among elite colleges. At Washington University in St. Louis, only 5.7 percent of students received Pell Grants. At the University of Pennsylvania, the share was 8.2 percent. At Duke and Northwestern, it was 8.3 percent. At Notre Dame, it was 8.4 percent. The numbers at Yale (8.9 percent), and Princeton (9.9 percent) were also fairly low. The share at Stanford was 12 percent.
I wouldn’t expect 50 percent of Harvard students — or even, say, 40 percent of Harvard students — to come from the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution. But 6.5 percent? To put it another way, do you believe that more than 93 percent of the students who are most deserving of attending the nation’s most prestigious, best financed college come from the top half of the income distribution?
Relatedly, it's worth noting that the United States has fairly low levels of economic mobility, despite our national myth to the contrary. From the Pew Economic Mobility project:
As Pew notes, "The higher the intergenerational elasticity of earnings, the more highly correlated one's income is with that of one's parents."
At this point, the children of the least well-off -- or even the middle-class -- have few opportunities for advancing beyond their "station." The labor market for high school graduates is abysmal, and college is increasingly unaffordable. What's more, given state and federal cuts, those lucky enough to attend college are likely to graduate with mountains of debt with few opportunities for career advancement or even decent employment. And this goes double for minorities, who are disproportionately lower-income and ill-placed to afford the rising cost of higher education.
At the risk of sounding banal, it's absolutely incredible that we can afford humanitarian missions in Libya, but can't be bothered to provide decent opportunities for young people. Unless, of course, you want to join the military.
