Anonymous wrote:I mean, duh?? Wealthy, high achieving people produce wealthy, high achieving children. SHOCKER!! That has nothing to do with the college.
What's more interesting is the colleges that can take low income students and propel them into higher brackets. Here's that list.
Top performers on social mobility, per US News:
- Keiser University
- UC-Riverside
- CSU-Long Beach
- Florida International University
- UC-Merced
- University of LaVerne
- CSU Fullerton
- Oakland City University
- Rutgers University Newark
- UC Irvine
- UIC Chicao
- CUNY City College
- CSU San Bernadino
- Russell Sage College
- San Francisco State
- UC Santa Barbara
- Chatham University
- UC Santa Cruz
- UNC Greensboro
Not a single top 50 college on the list until all the way down to number 46, which is UCLA. University of Florida is #75. UC Berkeley #105.
Elite private schools? No where to be found until you scroll reaaaally far down. NYU is #140. Princeton is #186.
Even this list is a bit misleading because what is likely happening at most of these schools is that low income students with great academics in HS are attending these schools in-state on scholarship (these systems all have good money available to in-state students with certain GPAs) allowing students to graduate with no or minimal debt and a degree from a school that is reasonably well regarded regionally, which enables them to get jobs and start building some wealth. Which is great! This is literally why public colleges should exist.
But if you are a low-income student with mediocre grades, or even a MC student with mediocre grades, going to UC Santa Cruz and borrowing a bunch of money to attend out of state with no scholarship offer is not going to propel you to financial success -- it's as likely to ruin to you.
I think the lesson of this list is that we need more reasonable quality public schools and that we should be investing more money in guaranteeing that students who maintain certain GPAs in HS and college can attend college for free or close to it. That would actually be a really solid policy goal for politicians who care about income inequality AND skyrocketing college costs.