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News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 7, 2002

State-by-state analysis reveals disparity in access to postsecondary education
Eligible, needy students face significant financial barriers

INDIANAPOLIS — A student’s opportunity to gain access to and afford a college education varies significantly from state to state, according to a report issued today by Lumina Foundation for Education. Furthermore, low-income students continue to have significantly fewer options than their higher-income counterparts and generally need to borrow to make college affordable.

“Geography matters. Where you live often limits your ability to go to college,” said Jerry Davis, vice president for research at Lumina Foundation. “A low-income, college-bound student in one state may have more options than a similarly qualified student in another state. College expenses, admission standards, financial aid resources and the number and types of institutions available vary among the states. Admissibility varies depending on the mix of institutions within a state; admissibility increases if two-year and community colleges are available. Affordability varies between states because of family income, state funding of higher education and financial aid and the availability of institutional aid.”

Davis noted, “The combination of federal, state and institutional grant aid is often insufficient to close the sizable affordability gap, particularly for low-income students.”

“The findings in this report, Unequal Opportunity: Disparities in College Access Among the 50 States, have important implications for all Americans,” said Davis. “Even with continued improvements in financial aid and an increased cost-containment focus by colleges, needy students still struggle to afford a postsecondary education. All interested stakeholders need to do more to provide equal access to all students. Federal and state policy-makers, as well as philanthropists and businesses, must continue to focus on this important issue and partner with higher education institutions to close the funding gap, particularly for our country’s neediest students.”

He added that this situation begs for attention now because demographic projections show that an increasing proportion of college students will be from low-income groups in the future.

The study of 2,887 degree-granting colleges classifies each college/university in terms of its admissibility and affordability and examines differences in the patterns within and among states for different types of institutions and different groups of students.

Institutions are defined as admissible if they are open to college-qualified students with test scores and grades that place them in the 25^th to 75^th percentiles of college-bound high school graduates from their state. In assessing affordability, the study focuses not only on college expenses and family resources, but also on the extent to which federal, state and institutional aid help meet financial need for specific types of students. If the sum of these potential financial sources met the estimated expenses, the college was considered affordable. These two measures — affordability and admissibility — are combined to classify each institution in terms of its accessibility.

“An accessible institution is one that college-qualified students are academically and financially able to attend,” said Samuel M. Kipp III, the lead researcher and co-author of the report. “Low-income students have far fewer accessible options than median-income students with similar academic qualifications. For both groups, the extent of their choices varies depending on the state in which they reside.”

The analysis produced several key findings:

• Residential campuses tend to be less affordable than commuter campuses, even within the same university system, because financial aid does not usually make up the additional expense of a residential campus.
• Independent students have access to fewer affordable institutions and must borrow more than dependent students.
• Pell Grants and student loans help close the affordability gap for low-income students but do not cover the entire gap.

“Even at the institutions we consider the most affordable — public colleges and universities — and especially at four-year institutions, low-income students must borrow money to make these institutions affordable more often than their median-income peers,” said Derek Price, director of higher education research at Lumina Foundation and co-author of the report. He noted that in 22 states at least twice as many loan-free options are available to median-income students as compared to low-income students. 

The vast majority of undergraduates enroll in public colleges and universities. In 1998 public institutions accounted for 82 percent of all undergraduate enrollments. Therefore, one of the best indicators of a state’s accessibility is the extent to which public two- and four-year institutions are generally accessible for its residents. At least 90 percent of the public institutions in 14 states and the District of Columbia are accessible to low-income, dependent students. These states are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wyoming.

At the other extreme, more than one-fourth of the public institutions in 16 states are inaccessible based on the study’s methodology.The states with the least accessibility are:  Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

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