Colleges: How They Actually Fail to Provide Economic Opportunity for Low-Income Students

College is a wonderful place where people have the opportunity to constantly learn about themselves and grow as individuals. College students are challenged everyday with high-level academic concepts, on top of facing countless social experiences. While college provides many wonderful opportunities for people and, more or less, an avenue for social equality, there is a legitimate concern about the high costs to attend a university. More specifically, it is a concern about how these costs provide a roadblock to the idea that college is the greatest avenue that provides newfound economic opportunity.

It is no secret that college professors and the college environment itself align with liberal ideology, which by nature, tends to be more promotional of the concept of equity in all facets of life. A study by Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business management at Brooklyn College, found that at 20 of the 51 liberal arts colleges studied, there were zero tenured, Ph.D.-holding Republican professors. This heavy liberal ideology has undeniably transformed colleges into places that vigorously promote and protect social equality. Students who outwardly demonstrate anti-LGBTQ+ or racist behavior through their words or actions are, at the very least, shunned and condemned by the majority of the student body. In some cases, the administration can expel the student(s). As a result, colleges are a place where people who identify as a racial minority or LGBTQ+ can generally feel more accepted and comfortable. The college environment does a fantastic job of promoting social equality.

While colleges are successful in improving the idea of social equality, when it comes to promoting more economic opportunity or allowing people to advance in economic class, universities fail. The major element of this is the astronomical cost of college and its ramifications. With income inequality growing exponentially in the United States since the 1980s and the concurrent rise in college tuition, college is really becoming a place only for people who come from families in the top income brackets. Since the 1990s, it has been reported that nearly 67 percent of selective public universities have increased the proportion of students that come from families in the top 20 percent of incomes. The percentage of students from high-income families is even larger at prestigious private schools like Harvard, where the median parental income was reported to be around $168,000 in 2013. Meanwhile, the cost of college has increased at a rate eight times faster than real wages. Most estimates of the average cost of a public university hover a tad over $25,000 annually (in-state). The implication of that is that on aggregate, people who had kids in the 1980s and 1990s saw their wage growth slow, while it became increasingly more expensive to send their children to universities.

It's very important to know the reason why colleges charge such a large amount of money on tuition. The cost for college has gone up exponentially because it has become an arms race. Colleges take in record amounts of tuition to fund their different investment projects, with the ultimate goal of a having a competitive edge. This competitive advantage brings more students onto campus in the future and puts the school onto a path of financial growth. In 2015, colleges and universities spent around $11.5 billion on construction. Running like non-profit organizations, they take in the money and spend it on new dormitories, nicer lecture halls, and other amenities to improve their standing in comparison to other universities. This creates a continuous cycle. A university gets a modern library or a new football stadium and others follow suit. Combine the fact that governments, at the state and national level, have cut their funding to public higher education, and you have an irreversible trend of rising tuition. They put this burden on students because economically, the demand for college is generally greater than the supply. The market consensus is that students need the university more than it needs them, and universities place a higher value on revenue than education.

The only available avenue for students to combat high tuition is to go out to the loan, grant, or scholarship market. The loan market has permitted students to graduate with debt that they will, at the very least, take years to pay off. The other contingencies, such as loan officers misleading borrowers, the fact that these debts are unforgivable in bankruptcy, and the persistent financial burden that these debts have on people warrants its own article. The bottom line is that going the debt route to pay for school can cause financial stress for those in need of the money.

The other route would be grants or scholarships. The Pell Grant is a federal grant awarded to low-income students after they have submitted their, or in most cases, their parents' income information. The maximum amount that could be awarded for the 2017 to 18 academic year was $5,920, while the College Board estimates that the average cost for a year at a public state college is $25,290. Of course, this cost includes room and board at the university, books, and even food. Nevertheless, that still means a student from a low-income household, with no parental support would theoretically have to take ownership for the remaining $20,000. It has to be asked how that student is going to make that income during the year, attend class, study, and get the full value from the social experience of college. Even if the school gives them a scholarship as a supplement to their income, most of which require carrying a minimum GPA, how likely are they to meet that standard? Their likelihood of being successful in college is exponentially lower than those who may not have to worry as much about covering their expenses.

All of these interrelated facts come together to paint a contrast to the attitude that college is the great economic equalizer and provides opportunities for people from lower financial backgrounds. From my personal experience I failed to meet one person during my undergraduate education who was 100 percent financially independent from their parents, and that was while attending a state institution. As a society and at a governmental level, work needs to be done to provide a more ordinary path to success for those from lower-income backgrounds. If this doesn't occur, people need to discuss college as what it is, a place full of students from high-income families whose parents can afford the astronomical costs mixed with the extraordinary few who are uniquely blessed to navigate their way through despite disadvantages. The disconnect between the sales pitch for college and the reality that exists needs to dissipate.