Monday, September 26, 2022

Many Colleges Fail in Push to Boost Enrollment of Lower-Income Students

Dozens of top schools are losing ground on goal of enrolling 50,000 additional students by 2025

By Melissa Korn of The WSJ. Excerpts: 

"Dozens of the nation’s top universities are falling short on their goals to enroll more lower-income students—and many are actually losing ground, despite major investments in financial aid, recruiting and academic support, according to a recent report detailing enrollment trends.

More than 125 colleges, including all eight members of the Ivy League, the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin, have signed on to the American Talent Initiative, a campaign established in 2016 that aims to increase by 50,000 the number of lower-income students who enroll at high-performing schools by 2025.

They added just 7,713 such students between 2015 and 2021, the initiative’s progress report found, with early gains partly wiped out during the Covid-19 pandemic, when overall enrollment declined nationwide.

In the 2021-22 school year, the 127 schools that provided data for the report enrolled 292,367 undergraduates who received federal need-based Pell Grants, which serve as a common proxy to measure lower-income student enrollment. That was down by about 500 from the prior year, and off the 2018 peak of 299,084."

Here are some earlier posts on related topics:

Does It Pay To Go To College? (2009)

Maybe That College Degree Is Not As Valuable As You Thought (2010)

As college costs rise, sticker shock eased by student aid (2010)

Is It Getting Too Expensive To Go College? (2011)

Is College Still A Good Investment? (2012)

What College Majors Pay The Highest? (2013) 

 
 

Who Is Most Likely To Default On Their Student Loans? (2016)

The Diminishing Returns of a College Degree: In the mid-1970s, far less than 1% of taxi drivers were graduates. By 2010 more than 15% were (2017)

The Diminishing Returns of a College Degree (2017)

Student-Debt Forgiveness Is a Wonderful Boon, Until the IRS Comes Calling: Education analysts, student advocates warn of impending crisis from one-time tax bills individuals may not be prepared to pay off (2018)
 
Is the U.S. student loan system broken? (2019)

Many college dropouts are worse off economically than if they hadn’t started college (2019)

More employers offer workers help paying off student loans (2019)

College Still Pays Off, but Not for Everyone (2019)

Studying Economics Increases Wages a Lot (2020)

A Declining Industry? The Growing Financial Risks Of Attending College (2022)

See also from Feb. 2020 this article 33 of the Highest-Paying Majors You Can Choose in College.

Here is the salary data from that article

The 15 Highest-Paying Majors Overall

1. Petroleum engineering Median salary: $135,754 
2. Pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences, and pharmaceutical administration Median salary: $112,519 
3. Metallurgical engineering Median salary: $97,743 
4. Mining and mineral engineering Median salary: $97,372 
5. Chemical engineering Median salary: $96,156 
6. Electrical engineering Median salary: $93,215 
7. Aerospace engineering Median salary: $90,141 
8. Mechanical engineering Median salary: $86,883 
9. Computer engineering Median salary: $86,553 
10. Geological and geophysical engineering Median salary: $86,553 
11. Computer science Median salary: $82,858 
12. Civil engineering Median salary: $82,858 
13. Applied mathematics Median salary: $82,858 
14. Industrial and manufacturing engineering Median salary: $81,452 
15. Physics Median salary: $81,143

 
The Best College Majors Outside of Technology and Engineering
 
1. Economics Median salary: $76,000 
2. Finance Median salary: $73,000
3. Accounting Median salary: $69,000 
4. Oceanography Median salary: $69,000 
5. Geology and earth science Median salary: $69,000 
6. Food science Median salary: $67,000 
7. Agricultural economics Median salary: $67,000 
8. Nursing Median salary: $66,000 
9. Industrial and organizational psychology Median salary: $66,000 
10. Meteorology Median salary: $66,000 
11. Public policy Median salary: $65,000 
12. Chemistry Median salary: $64,000 
13. Political science Median salary: $64,000 
14. Marketing Median salary: $63,000 
15. Forestry Median salary: $62,000 
16. Business management and business administration Median salary: $62,000 
17. International relations Median salary: $62,000 
18. Microbiology Median salary: $62,000

 

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