New research sponsored by the IRS and funded by a group of foundations, including Gates, Russell Sage, and Robert Woods Johnson uses IRS and National Student Loan Data System data to look at earnings of graduates between the ages of 32 and 34. The authors calculated a “Mobility Index” to measure the success of every college and university in the United States in moving students from the lowest 20 percent of incomes to the highest 20 percent.
More from a blog post by Dewayne Matthews
“There are two headlines from the study. First, poor students who go to elite institutions earn almost as much after graduation as rich students, but very few poor students get into elite institutions. Second, a group of mid-tier institutions, including schools such as California State University, Los Angeles, and the City College of New York are important contributors to economic mobility because their graduates earn incomes similar to those who emerge from elite universities, but these mid-tier institutions enroll many more students from low-income families.”