How family structure impacts college attendance

White House seeks ways 

to get poor kids through college 

by Nicole M. King

President Obama has made college attendance for the low-income a top concern in his administration, and an NPR story this week covers the ways that American colleges and universities are trying to recruit such students—and keep them until graduation.

Bryn Mawr is one college that has come up with creative recruitment methods. Every year, the school actively searches for 10 low-income students from Boston, and provides them with financial aid. Other schools are following suit, but the “dirty little secret” of American higher education, says Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation, “is that universities care about racial diversity and do a good job of trying to promote that, but they completely ignore the issue of socioeconomic diversity.” One reason, of course, is that economic diversity is a much more expensive proposition for a college: that financial aid has to come from somewhere. Scholars also cite high application fees and lack of parental guidance as reasons that low-income students do not apply to college.

But research demonstrates that no matter how hard colleges seek to enrol low-income students, their efforts will likely be only a drop in the bucket, as family structure is a crucial and completely ignored factor in the likelihood that any particular student will attend college.


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