
Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 - thisisit
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html
======
krat0sprakhar
If anyone's interested in learning more about this topic I can't recommend
Revisionist History's episode 4, 5 & 6 enough. Malcolm Gladwell uses a very
compelling and thought-provoking narrative to dissect educational philanthropy
and how hard the elite universities trying to be more inclusive (or are they?)

[0] -
[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes)

~~~
heymijo
Let me second that. Gladwell raises my skeptic alarm often, but these three
highlighted episodes are good.

For the past 7 years I've been involved in education from pre-k to university
and my BS detector didn't budge during these episodes.

~~~
Sone7
I'll second your Gladwell doubt:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161228/23550336364/malco...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161228/23550336364/malcolm-
gladwells-ridiculous-attack-ed-snowden-based-weird-prejudice-about-how-
whistleblower-should-look.shtml)

But the guy can be good, I'll check these out.

~~~
nickbauman
Very skeptical of Gladwell, especially since _David and Goliath_

[http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.ph...](http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.php)

------
EduardoBautista
The poorer 20% are also much more likely to go to for profit "colleges". I
don't think this is as simple as saying they can't afford to go to the best
colleges.

~~~
plandis
> But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income
> families than on expanding access. “Free tuition only helps if you can get
> in,"

This is, I think, the bigger problem. Educational opportunities are highly
differentiated by wealth at a young age. Better public schools require living
in more expensive neighborhoods. Private schools are expensive and even on
financial aid difficult for some people to get to. Poor people can't afford to
send their kids on summer trips (i.e. summer camp) and effectively the poor
are more likely to have learning stop in the summer. To top if off, the
guidance people in poor school districts get in/around their senior year is
rarely helpful and sometimes just terrible (I.e. councilors telling students
to not even bother applying to Harvard, etc...)

So yes, I'd say it's more complicated. When you're poor you're playing against
students with a stacked deck. That's not to say there is no personable
accountability, but it's not the only determining factor.

~~~
pkaye
I don't know if we can account for the wealth difference and "stacked desk" at
the school level. My city school district has five high schools in difference
part of the city. The best ones is near the top of the state academic ranking
while the others are average. They all get the same level of funding from the
city and the schools look all equally run down. The difference is the
demographics of those attending these schools. When they started statewide
ranking of schools, families started gravitating to the slightly better
schools and driving up the prices on neighboring houses. So this school is
full of wealthy and high achieving families despite equal levels of funding.

~~~
the_gastropod
Don't most cities contribute a proportion of a school district's property
taxes to that district's school(s)? So districts with expensive housing
receive more funding than those with cheaper housing.

I agree that home life influences schooling outcomes as well. Families with
higher incomes can afford for one parent to stay home or to pay for a nanny or
whatever. But in addition, many schools are funded disproportionately, where
the schools with the most need receive the least funding.

~~~
tnecniv
If I recall, many of the worst school districts (inner cities) also spend the
most dollars per student. I've been told this multiple times, but can't look
for a source at the moment. Can someone else confirm or deny?

~~~
vanattab
They definitely receive more in federal funds but I am not sure if this takes
into account local money raised through levies/property taxes.

------
basseq

      But some elite colleges have focused more on being 
      affordable to low-income families than on expanding 
      access.
    

The article talks about _access_ multiple times, but never defines what that
might mean. If financial commitment is removed from the table, either
qualified low-income applicants aren't being accepted at the same rates
(unsubstantiated here) or qualified low-income applicants simply aren't
applying (supported by linked research[1]). Or colleges accept students based
on qualification alone and are "blind" to economic circumstances—which may be
good or bad depending on your POV.

If the second, the question then becomes how to _encourage_ those applicants.
Is that "access"?

Or do we need to re-think "qualification" to be more democratic (if it
includes, say, international exposure that can be bought)? Are institutions
obligated to change their qualification criteria to this end? _Should_ they
all?

The selectivity-vs-income ("rainbow") chart is interesting and fairly linear.
I wonder what a similar "qualification-vs-income" chart would look like: e.g.,
are top 0.1%-ers "more qualified" (e.g., more likely to get into a selective
university by performance alone) than other bands?

Then we're either into _really_ dangerous territory (e.g., wealth correlated
with intelligence), we're back to (re-)defining qualification criteria, or we
shift the "blame" from university admissions to childhood education.

[1][http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586](http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586)

~~~
SilasX
I assume, from that sentence, "expanding access" means "teaching more
students" and thus accepting a larger class/more applicants.

~~~
basseq
Sure, but that's a pretty blind metric. "If Harvard (6k undergrads) accepted
as many students as Texas A&M (50k undergrads), it would be more diverse!" But
then it wouldn't be selective; it wouldn't be _Harvard_.

Presuming Harvard is interested in increasing enrollment _at all_ , that alone
doesn't help increase these _percentages_. If Harvard accepts 1 low-income
student for every 10 people, and accepts 100 more people in total, the mix is
still 10%. I don't think that's "increased access".

------
syphilis2
It's disappointing that the article leads into this as a discussion about
income inequality at certain universities, when the study is branded as a tool
for low income students to determine which colleges provide the best
opportunity for upward mobility.

[http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/](http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/)

~~~
rmxt
Why is starting such a discussion "disappointing"? It seems like a fair
extrapolation to make, and a conversation worth exploring. Is income
inequality at particular universities _not_ an interesting issue to explore?

The article links to the page you've linked to, and includes links to data and
source information. I haven't personally vetted what NYT has done here, but it
seems fair to take original research and run with it in new directions.

~~~
syphilis2
Well yes, income inequality at a particular university is not interesting
because the paper concludes that upward mobility is a better metric to
identify schools that should be expanded. I see comments below about
capitalism, supply/demand, luxury cars, tuition, affirmative action, banning
private/for-profit schools, and social status. Some of those are totally
irrelevant, and the relevant ones ought to be in the context of how they
relate to access to high mobility schools.

There are accompanying NYT articles, and I agree that it's fair to jump off
from the research. I believe the discussion needs to incorporate the
conclusions from the paper into that new direction.

------
xorfish
Education should be cheap for everyone, otherwise this will only get worse.

Additionally everyone that has finished High School should be accepted into
any state-funded university. You can seed out the unqualified students during
the first two semesters.

~~~
wang_li
It would be silly to put a bunch of resources into expanding college and
university accessibility. In the US, highschool is free and mandatory, but
still 20% of students are not graduating. Then there's the portion of those
who graduate who have GPAs lower than 3.0. A disappointingly large portion of
students do not take education seriously and there is no real societal value
in providing those students with four more years of tax-payer supported casual
living.

~~~
gambiting
Just to provide an example how other countries do it - in Poland, all higher
education is 100% free for the student. It doesn't matter what and where they
want to study - there is nothing to pay.

Of course, the problem you mentioned still exists - a lot, if not most of
people are not cut out for higher education, and since there is no financial
barrier to entry, why aren't people spending 3+ years on taxpayer's dime doing
nothing?

Well, I believe there are two mechanisms at work here - it's stupidly hard to
get into any university, even a relatively poor one. You need fantastically
good results on the high school diploma or you are not even considered.

Second mechanism - first year is the sieve to rule out who is not cut out for
higher education. It has a reputation for being harshly difficult, and it's
not unheard of university courses failing or just losing 90% of all students
that have enrolled in their first year. If you come to university with an
attitude that you are going to party and play games, you will be out by the
end of the first semester. Then, if you do reach the end, there's no "grades"
on your diploma. You can't graduate with a low score so to speak - you need to
have absolutely pristine record to actually graduate. People have finished
their 3-4 years and have been re-taking final exams for years just because you
need to get something stupid like 90%+ score to actually pass.

In comparison, I was shocked by education in country like the UK - in here,
first year of uni is almost treated like kindergarten. It's not meant to be
difficult. You are not meant to be treating it seriously. It's the year when
you are supposed to get the partying out of your system and enjoy yourself.
The grades from 1st year don't even count towards your final degree. The only
way to fail in 1st year would be to assault a lecturer or something. Then
anything above 40% is a pass. "First" is just a paltry 70% of higher. So you
can cruise through higher education and graduate, even if your scores were
below 50% average.

~~~
foobarian
I feel that stricter systems like this require an extremely homogeneous
society to work. Everyone has to be on the ball, educating the kids from a
young age. This includes both the actual education of things they learn, as
well as instilling the values of respect for learning and education. When you
have a fragmented society it feels like it's hard to fix the low performers at
the college level, and even having a much stricter and/or free system would
not help without a huge upstream culture change.

I don't know what the solution is (US-centric). Push the education and values
as widely as possible relentlesly, hoping to get a positive first derivative,
and maybe in 50 years things will be better?

------
wyldfire
> Add your favorite colleges to the tables in this article:

What a great idea! NYT really capitalizes on this medium and doesn't simply
deliver print articles via web.

~~~
jedberg
They have a very strong web team. In fact, they are contributors to things
like D3 and other big JS libraries.

~~~
wyldfire
True. But I think it takes a distinct editorial mind shift to publish articles
that have interactivity features, though. It's not enough to have "a very
strong web team" if they're only focused on dimensions like uptime and page
load times.

------
wehadfun
In their top 10 list the only school I have heard of is Tuf. Are these
considered Elite colleges? Havard, Yale, Penn, MIT, Columbia, were not there.

~~~
gmarx
I checked MIT (alma mater) and it was 173 greatly skewed towards the bottom
60%. Don't know if this is something to be proud of but there it is :)

~~~
mturmon
A big endowment ($13.5B / class size = 940 => $14M/student) + the will to use
it on scholarships. Kudos to them.

I did undergrad at WashU, which in this ranking is the poster child for
regressive admissions. WashU is opposite MIT in this respect: a medium-sized
endowment ($6B / class size = 1400 => $4M/student) and no will to use it, at
least not on scholarships.

It was not that way back when I attended. The only way I can make sense of the
graphs of diversity vs. time is that they are aggressively increasing tuition,
recruiting among the wealthy, and erecting fancy buildings.

------
tabeth
As someone who was born into a bottom 20% family and went to a supposed "Ivy
Plus/Elite College" this is not shocking to me at all. The culture shock for
me personally was amazing. In particular, I'll never forget when some students
wanted to go to Asia of all places for a 4 day weekend.

Though I've personally benefited from diversity recruiting for low income,
first in family to go to college, etc. I still believe the solution is to fix
K-12. In particular, Boston is an example of there being great higher
education, but terrible public schools.

\-----------------

Short of that, I would recommend for the following actions:

1\. Anonymous interviewing for all companies, mandatory. Let's be honest,
those attending elite schools are the biggest beneficiaries of "discriminatory
recruiting." Oh, except, not if you're the stereotypical beneficiary of
affirmative action [1] (ironic because really white women are those who
benefit the most [2]). The idea here is to level the playing field. I imagine
most resistance to this will come from people who went to schools similar to
mine.

2\. Banning of private schools. This probably won't happen, but private
schools simply perpetuate the problems with access. How is it that rich cities
like Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco have terrible school systems?
Don't get me wrong, this isn't THE solution, there's still the rich suburb
effect [3]. Practically, this probably wouldn't work. Those in control
generally either live in rich suburbs or send their kid to private school. It
would take one heck of a politician to pull this off.

3\. Affirmative action should now be implemented at the beginning, not at the
end. Helping people who already succeeded is unnecessary for real change, and
expensive. Not to mention it's cheaper and more effective [4]. The tin-foil
hat in me says that people wouldn't want this to happen, simply because it'd
produce better competition. Affirmative action at the end is more tame.

4\. More advocacy of college alternatives. Personally, I went to a two-year
college and transferred to an "Ivy Plus/Elite College" in order to not pay
loans. Ironically, that was not necessary since they paid for everything
anyway, but hey, I didn't know that. For many, college loans are just
entrapment [5]. Two year college is a factor to help mitigate the pain, in the
short term [6].

5\. Complete banning of for-profit school. There's already been movement in
this direction, with the prevention of enrollment of students with federal aid
to ITT. [7]

I have many more ideas about this, but unfortunately things are very
complicated. The intersection between the economy, parenting, culture, the
government as well as racism, discrimination and access make it very difficult
to propose a general solution.

I disagree with my own advice above depending on the city, and the
circumstances. Ultimately, this is too tough a problem to solve merely with
broad strokes, but I do believe the sentiment "fix K-12" summarizes my view.

[1] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/06/elite-
college...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/06/elite-college-
degrees-give-black-graduates-little-advantage-job-market)

[2] [http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has-
help...](http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/17/affirmative-action-has-helped-white-
women-more-than-anyone/)

[3] [http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/even-
if-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/even-if-private-
schools-didnt-exist-there-would-still-be-rich-suburbs/279295/)

[4] [http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/24/we-wouldnt-need-
affirmat...](http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/24/we-wouldnt-need-affirmative-
action-if-k-12-schools-actually-worked/)

[5] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/upshot/student-debt-is-
wo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/upshot/student-debt-is-worse-than-
you-think.html)

[6] [http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/make-first-
two-...](http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/brief/make-first-two-years-
college-free-cost-effective-way-expand-access-higher-education-america)

[7] [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0828/For-
profit-...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0828/For-profit-
college-banned-from-accepting-students-with-federal-aid)

~~~
RestlessMind
If you want affirmative action to be implemented at the beginning, why not
take that thought further and discourage someone from producing kids when they
are not yet ready to be parents?

Honestly, government help is definitely _necessary_ to help the less
privileged kids. But it is by no means _sufficient_ if the home environment is
broken and parents don't have time to develop their children.

~~~
tabeth
I don't believe that's necessary. Education already promotes not having kids,
or at least waiting. [1][2] What you propose is also politically impossible (I
completely agree, in theory, however). We already know how challenging the
abortion and sex education issue has been. Proper sex education (and K-12,
generally) will implicitly implement what you're suggesting.

[1] [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/education-
lev...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/education-level-
inversely-related-to-childbearing/)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not-
pa...](http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not-panic-over-
women-with-more-education-having-fewer-kids/273070/)

~~~
WildUtah
Education promotes smart people not having kids, especially smart women.

But it doesn't diminish in any way the dumb people. If you have no intention
of getting an education or supporting yourself in the modern world, a tougher
education system with higher standards won't discourage your reproduction.

------
aidenn0
I went to Purdue, which I considered fairly blue-collar as far as 4-year
universities go. Stats: 3.1% from the 1% and 21.1% from the bottom 60%. Even
more sobering is that there are more people from the bottom 40% at MIT than at
Purdue.

I then thought of what would be the most blue-collar state university in
Indiana, and checked ISU: <1% from the 1% and 46.5% from the bottom 60%.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I don't find this surprising at all. I spent a summer program at ISU once and
had plenty of friends that wound up going there. In the mid-90's, it was
cheaper than both Indiana University and Purdue, with smaller class sizes -
and they have a completely different focus it seemed. If I remember correctly,
ISU seemed to cater towards lower income much more than Purdue ever did.

------
rbcgerard
two thoughts

1\. I think its interesting/notable that the colleges that are most successful
at helping poorer kids, are not elite schools, but rather are training people
for well paying "middle class" jobs like teaching them how to be an air
traffic controller

2\. nowhere does it talk about the cost of providing an education...if it
costs College X $75,000/year/student and College Y costs $15,000/year/student
then making Y "affordable" is eminently easier than X...the point being some
schools may want to have a more economically diverse student body, but in
order to achieve that end, they would need to either spend less on education
(and consequently become less prestigious), raise more money/get more grants,
or charge the students that are already paying full tuition even more...none
of which appealing/easy...

~~~
dikdik
>they would need to either spend less on education (and consequently become
less prestigious)

Given many studies (notably Google's) showing that school performance is not a
good indicator of future performance. Is losing prestige such a bad thing? It
would be if the prestige was correlated with significantly smarter and better
performing graduates.

But if the prestige only comes from being associated with higher class
individuals, all you are losing is a false-positive signal.

~~~
rbcgerard
I think the conventional wisdom is that prestige allows schools to attract
better students and professors, and to raise more money from alumni sort of
creating a virtuous cycle...but to a certain extent its zero sum, so some
schools actually end up trying to compete in races that they can't win to
their detriment, and effectively to the detriment of their students.

------
lngnmn
Ivy League degree is not about education, but a social status certificate.
That is why 1% are paying for it in the first place. No wonder that most of
the Ivy Leagues colleges are of liberal arts.

There is MIT for education.

~~~
Kephael
MIT practices the same undergraduate admissions shenanigans as Ivy League
universities. At a certain point, the course material is largely identical. I
really doubt 6.006 is going to significantly differ from CS 31 in terms of
student outcomes [1]. Liberal arts are great to study at top schools if you'd
like to work in investment banking or consulting.

[1]
[http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs31/journal.html](http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~cs31/journal.html)

------
redbluetriangle
Elite schools may provide generous financial aid, but what this ignores is
that typically students from lower income families go to secondary schools
that are weaker than traditional schools upper middle class students attend.
Some provide few AP courses, one where no one may explains/prep students for
the SAT and only schools students are recommended to attend are local
community college/nearby schools. Take a top student from this school and she
may have 0 AP courses, 3.8 unweighted GPA, 0 ECs, average SAT score (after
taking it blind) and from a low income family. Elite universities will not
lower their admission requirements to accept her, nor would top public
universities. Due to her background, she is forced to attend a lower ranked
school. She failed at a game she never had a chance to win to begin with.

Harvard and the like may offer great financial aid to those students, but
those students are the very ones that aren't going to be accepted Harvard.

------
flareback
In other news, more people from the top 1% drive Ferraris than people from the
bottom 50%.

------
gremlinsinc
Maybe we should replace affirmative action w/ one based on income... Average
incomes of student families must = average american salary -- or absolutely 0
tax savings, grants, etc.... from the government.

------
dpflan
To the extent that society is self-similar, does this represent society as a
whole - like some sort of power laws of societal existence/expression?

------
tedmiston
> Where today’s 25-year-olds went to college, grouped by their parents’ income

Their parents' income relative to what...

The city their parent works or lives in? The state? Country-wide?

Seems like an important thing to clarify. You can be in the top 5–10% in a
small blue-collar town and still middle of the road across the country.

~~~
dmoy
In any context I've ever seen, income percentiles are always nation-wide.

Re-read OP, didn't see them explicitly call it out, but they did implicitly
mention "[percent] of American families" in places, so likely it's nation here
too.

------
BigJeffeRonaldo
I find it very interesting that many so-called "Ivy Misser" schools such as
WUSTL and Tufts have more 1%ers and fewer 60%ers than extremely elite schools
such as Princeton and Harvard. Even Yale has a lower ranking on the list.
Perhaps the elite of the elite are more concerned with giving their progeny a
broad exposure to different classes of people, while more middling members of
the upper class concern themselves with status signalling.

------
rednerrus
You would think it makes sense to grab the smartest poor people and start
indoctrinating them as soon as possible.

------
lend000
This is partially a side effect of admissions that are skewed by racial
affirmative action, as opposed to taking into account overall socioeconomic
status. Race is still a factor for two families of similar income, but Obama's
children received a enjoyed significantly more educational opportunities than
the children of an average working-class West Virginia white family -- yet
admissions only sees race.

------
mohanmcgeek
What happened to the 39% in between? Aren't they the majority?

------
randyrand
this is because some schools are very expensive.

------
thenewregiment1
Everything in this world is a commodity. Supply vs demand. Education is like
that too.

------
xyzzy4
Some sports cars have more owners from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60.
What's the big deal?

Besides, farming is the backbone of civilization. You don't need much
education for that. Everything we have nowadays is extra.

~~~
cmdrfred
Farming is less than 1% of human activity currently.

~~~
xyzzy4
In India it's half of the workforce. So I don't think your 1% is accurate.
Also most jobs are nonessential for human survival, unlike agriculture.

~~~
cmdrfred
In first world nations it is. The US has 3.2 million farmers and a population
of 325 million or so. I don't know if your figure is inaccurate, misleading or
farmers in India are extremely inefficient.

~~~
xyzzy4
"Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied
sectors like forestry and fisheries accounted for 13.7% of the GDP (gross
domestic product) in 2013,[2] about 50% of the workforce.[3][4]" \- Wikipedia

~~~
vonmoltke
50% of the population is in _agriculture_ , not _farming_. Total agriculture
represents about 10% of US jobs, but only 10% of agriculture jobs are farming
jobs.

------
popobobo
This is a capitalism country. We reward individuals who are rich. What is
wrong with rich kids getting into college? This is the bonus they got from
creating more economy growth for the society. And to be honest, the 1% income
limit is misleading. The real rich people will laugh at the 1% income
threshold. With 1% income in nyc, you can't even raise a family in decent life
style.

~~~
kemayo
> This is the bonus they got from creating more economy growth for the
> society.

One quibble: it's not them, it's their parents.

There _are_ 18 year old entrepreneurs who've created lots of economic growth,
of course, but they're very much not the crowd we're talking about here.

~~~
popobobo
I am talking on a GDP basis.

~~~
qntty
On a GDP basis, it's still their parents.

