There are no solid estimates on how many students find themselves in situations like Aaron’s or like those faced by Jason’s friends. But the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, the organization created by Congress to advise lawmakers on student aid policy, says the problem is critical. The committee’s June 2002 report, Empty Promises, says: “This year alone, due to record-high financial barriers, nearly one-half of all college-qualified low- and moderate-income high school graduates — over 400,000 fully prepared to attend a four-year college — will be unable to do so, and 170,000 of these students will attend no college at all.”

While a number of experts contend that these numbers are on the high side, others agree with Advisory Committee Staff Director Brian Fitzgerald that the estimates are “very conservative.”

Bridget Long, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, agrees. She says: “It’s most likely that any numbers you come up with understate the problem.” Long reasons that data about college-going patterns cannot take into account students who, in the sixth grade, “think they will never get into college so they don’t do a bunch of things to prepare.” Says Long: “A person could make the decision that ‘college is too expensive for me, so I won’t try.’ ”

According to Scott Gillie, executive director of a Bloomington, Indiana-based pre-college access program called Encouragement Services Inc., there is a real disconnection between what high school students /say/ about going to college and what they actually do when it’s time to enroll. “We see in Indiana very high rates of aspiration in the ninth grade for all races and ethnicities.” Gillie says. “If participation were at the level of ninth-grade aspiration, Indiana college-going would double.”

When capable students forgo college, the potential losses are enormous — for individuals and for the nation as a whole.

According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the average income of high school graduates 25 years or older and working full time in 1999 was about $25,000. For those with a four-year college degree, that figure was much higher — around $46,000.

A well-educated work force is critical to the nation’s economic and social health, especially in today’s global, information-based economy. In an April 2002 Educational Testing Service report titled /The Missing Middle/, researcher Anthony Carnevale points out that, if U.S. workers’ literacy levels matched those in Sweden — where the percentage of workers at the lowest literacy level is one-third the U.S. percentage — our gross domestic product would rise by $463 billion and our tax revenue by $162 billion. Similarly, in a 2001 report titled /Access Denied/, the Advisory Committee said that if the gap in “the college-going rates of the highest- and lowest-income Americans were narrowed significantly, we would add nearly $250 billion to the gross domestic product and $80 billion in taxes.”

Unfortunately, say experts, that gap has persisted for many years. In 1972, 45 percent of high school graduates from families in the lowest income quar tile and 74 percent in the highest quartile went on to college, according to data compiled by policy analyst Tom Mortenson. In 2000, the comparable numbers were 54 percent and 82 percent. “The gap in college participation by income is as great as it was three decades ago,” says Donald Heller, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for The Study of Higher Education.

Thomas J. Kane, professor of policy studies and economics at UCLA, offers an even gloomier assessment, pointing to long-term studies that show “a widening of the gap” between the most and least affluent students in terms of college participation. Even among high school students who score highest on standardized tests, there is a significant and persistent gap in who goes to college. In /Access Denied/, the Advisory Committee reports that 97 percent of the highest-achieving upper-income students go on to college. In the lowest income group, only 78 percent of these high-achieving students enroll in postsecondary education.

Socioeconomic status, says the Advisory Committee, “remains a very powerful barrier to attending college at all, often trumping academic preparation even for the highest achievers.”