Too few low-income college students?
08.07.08
About 50 percent of low-income students enroll in college right after high school, compared with 80 percent of high-income students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That's a gap of 30 percentage points, a gap that over the past 30 years has fluctuated between 22 and 49 points.
For low-income students with high achievement levels, the college attendance rate is higher - about 77 percent - but that's about the same rate as high-income students with much lower achievement scores, according the College Board, a nonprofit association in New York that tracks and promotes college attendance.
As competition intensifies in the global marketplace - and as the numbers of people in developing countries who complete college is quickly increasing - pressure is mounting in the US to remove barriers to higher education and develop the pool of talent represented by low-income students.
