Reaching those who can't pay their way

Yesterday’s editorial explored the constraints imposed on disabled students by the physical structures of the University. Today’s piece examines a different kind of structural constraint—limited access to top universities for low-income students.

A recent report found that high-achieving students from families making less than $41,472 per year apply to top universities at significantly lower rates than their wealthier peers. In 2012, only 8 percent of bright, low-income students applied to the advised range of colleges, and admissions offices at top colleges find it particularly challenging to reach potential applicants in rural areas.

Often low-income students do not apply to top universities because of the perceived cost, a trend that reflects the limited information about college admissions and financial aid available to students in low-income communities. The information deficit is both symptomatic and constitutive of a larger disparity in the quality and availability of institutional support for high school students. To attend a top university, a smart student from a well-funded school often has only to follow the advice offered to her by parents, teachers, counselors or coaches. A similarly intelligent but low-income student, however, has to overcome the inadequate counseling and advising systems that plague schools in poor and rural areas; parents and friends who—because they did not attend college—do not know how the admissions and financial aid processes work; complicated and exacting FAFSA forms; and a pervasive sense that people from her class or region do not, and therefore cannot, attend elite universities.

These constraints are deep-seated and deeply troubling. In the ideal world of college admissions, students would attend the school for which they are best suited, regardless of their class or proximity to an urban area. Given the connection between education and socioeconomic status—the further we drift from this ideal, the more we neglect our responsibility to ensure that social advancement is a function of skill and effort, not of class or pedigree.

However, universities like Duke have limited resources and cannot provide every qualified applicant with the information they need to apply to their school. Moreover, universities do not always have an incentive to ensure that all qualified high school students have an opportunity to attend their college. Talented applicants consistently flood top universities with applications, and, if those universities want to recruit a class of highly qualified students from a range of different backgrounds, they can almost certainly do so without traversing the country convincing low-income students to apply.

Top universities may perceive the costs of more focused recruitment to outweigh the benefits of expanded educational access. However, a nation that values—at least in theory—equity and social mobility has an obligation to ensure that talented and motivated students receive a high-quality education. Although universities do not bear sole responsibility for systemic educational inequities, we feel that Duke should bolster its recruitment efforts in rural and low-income communities and, in order to reduce costs and diffuse risk, expand recruitment partnerships with other colleges. A robust recruitment effort in low-income communities will not solve the problem, but it may help better match skilled students with the top universities.