College Rankings for "Social Mobility"

Find out which colleges ranked high in the “Social Mobility Index.” https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/colleges-ranked-for-social-mobility/

I’m confused as to why net cost isn’t accounted for.

http://www.socialmobilityindex.org/ explains why they use tuition rather than net tuition. You may or may not agree with the reason. Basically, they believe that high list price tuition discourages low-SES applicants from applying due to the relative opacity of financial aid and net price (even here on these forums, many posters have no idea that net price calculators exist to get preliminary estimates).

Of course, some odd cases may not be accounted for well. For example, Webb Institute has high tuition, but every US citizen and permanent resident gets a full tuition scholarship, so the opacity of financial aid and net price is reduced (although there is still some relating to the rest of the cost of attendance).

Interesting index to consider. Very concerned though regarding the low rate of graduation on many of these schools. Makes me wonder if this contributes to the greater statistic concerning the high amount of college loans not being paid off because (roughly calculated from a cursory glance) 40% of the students didn’t finish college and therefore didn’t obtain that $50K/year job. So are the colleges giving a hand up to those in need or incentivizing greater financial burdens for those already at a financial crossroad? … just a thought.

What a tremendously flawed list, can you figure out why all of the schools at the top of the list are either in California or New York?

The CSUs in California and CUNYs in NY do enroll a large percentage of students from low income backgrounds and have low in-state list prices, factors which move them up in this ranking.

Does it measure going a backwards too?

Agreed. Who cares what Boston College – since it is called out – charges for tuition as long as it is zero (BC meets full need) for those low income types that this SMI is purporting to target info?

Well this goes to my opinion that if you are low income that you should move to California for your best shot at going to college.

To all those who think the list is skewed in favor of commuter publics as opposed to elite privates that give full rides to low-income kids: how many of those full-ride kids actually get admitted to these private schools? I also would like to remind you that low-income kids on average score lower on standardized tests than their privileged counterparts, which makes it much harder for them to get into the schools that will give them a scholarship big enough to cover both tuition and living expenses.

I am not familiar with CSUs, but I do know about NYC and the CUNYs and what kind of students attend them. Most students at CUNY are commuters, either working adults or kids whose parents cannot contribute a penny to their college education. Even with financial aid, attending college away from home is frequently too much of a burden on many immigrant and minority families in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. The financial aid rates understate the actual number of low-income students, since undocumented/DACA students don’t file FAFSA and neither do many part-time and working students once they find out they do not qualify for anything. Considering the number of enrollees, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of students. Those of you whose kids went away to college and only worked summers, probably don’t realize that many CUNY students have to work to survive, even the young ones, and their ECs in high school were not coding camps and charity fundraisers but watching their younger siblings and earning cash. Many of these kids grew up with parents who do not speak English or did not graduate high school. The reason CUNYs always lead the social mobility rankings is that the vast majority of their students comes from nothing and many end up being highly successful. Every school within the system has very aggressive career services with strong connections to NYC’s main employers, and since it’s a thriving job market, CUNY graduates do very well career-wise, with earnings matching those of expensive private school graduates.

And as far as lower graduation rates in public schools with low-income populations, that’s just the reality of life. Poverty is a huge factor in ability to finish college on time. And yes, the university works to address it, but it is chronically cash-strapped so there is a limit to what it can do. Another cause behind lower graduation rates is lack of college preparedness. Kids coming out of NYC public schools often struggle with math, especially at schools like City College and Baruch, which sometimes requires multiple retakes of core classes and delays graduation. This especially happens with community college transfers, who often run out of financial aid before even passing their major pre-requisites and are forced to take a break. I personally met many bright students who were naturally intelligent but had a horrific educational background.

So, to answer your question, do the CUNYs and other commuter publics do more for the poor than the likes of Boston College? Oh yes. It’s not even close.

“I am not familiar with CSUs, but I do know about NYC and the CUNYs and what kind of students attend them.”

CSUs may have a similar profile (communter, lower SES etc), but I don’t think they have as many adult students as the CUNYs do, @ucbalumnus and @Gumbymom would probably know more about that. However without a doubt, public schools, esp is states like NY and CA will do a better job wrt economic mobility than privates, simply because its one of their goals, i.e. to improve wealth of their population via education, which is not the case with privates (fluffy mission statements aside). I grew up in NY and live in CA, they’re probably the two best states wrt to higher edu when you also consider their community colleges.

While CA and NY do well nether ranks in the top 10 % for college grads.

1 DoC

2 Massachusetts

3 Colorado

4 Maryland

5 Conneticut

10 NY

15 CA

@NYCgirl999 is right! The CUNY system, and to a lesser extent, the SUNY system, does a lot for social mobility. Very affordable tuition, and the rare distinction of frequently moving students from low income to middle or upper middle income.

I think what is important to note is that the “elite” liberal arts schools and universities that offer to pay full financial need in effect only offer a small percentage of students this opportunity, and the rest pay full tuition. Even the need-blind schools are low on this list because they are not truly need-blind as much as they claim they are. When you include your parents’ jobs and address on an application, it’s not hard to figure out where someone belongs on the socio-economic spectrum. The elite schools will never have good results on the upward social mobility index since a smaller percentage of their students actually come from disadvantaged backgrounds and the majority come from high-income families which skews their mobility numbers downward. The schools that rank well have more middle class and lower middle class families - which can’t afford the elite schools or don’t get in because they can’t pay the tuition - the high achieving students who are given the chance to succeed at these schools gain upward mobility and create a more positive ranking. While schools are trying to achieve lower admissions rates and climb the ranks of the US News and world report, I think this index shows the important work that these lower ranking schools are doing in bettering the life of the bulk of American students.
**And, to be fair, the New York and California schools are most likely skewed because they are offering opportunities for low income, high achieving residents, who end up making more by virtue of average salaries in these states. But, it’s nice to see some private universities higher up on the list and we should be thankful for the work they are doing for those students who don’t come from elite backgrounds.

I teach at Baruch, now that I’ve retired from Wall Street. I can tell you first-hand that CUNY is remarkable in its ability to help kids up the ladder. I just had an immigrant kid whose parents were homeless for a while get placed into a six-figure job at a big company immediately after graduation. I’ve seen several cases like this. Many of my students work full-time and go to school full-time. I’m sure other public institutions have similar success stories, but CUNY is amazing in its ability to change lives.

The fact that CUNY and UC schools are dominating the boards doesn’t mean there aren’t private Liberal Arts Colleges that are generous across the board and pretty committed to social mobility - they just won’t see as many salient changes as the CUNY’s will (1 and often 2 quintiles of income group movement or more) since they don’t have as many students in the bottom two quintiles. The CUNYs have a higher percentage of kids in the lower quintiles.

Unfortunately there is a paywall here, but if you type in a school you can see some detailed outcomes. Scroll down and see what the percentage chance a poor kid has of becoming rich (moving from bottom to top quintile), and the mobility index (chance of someone moving up 2 quintiles).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

CUNY and UC are doing more for a larger number of kids than, let’s say a school like Middlebury College. However, a poor kid at Middlebury has a better shot at becoming rich that a kid at CUNY, since they build social capital and make use of excellent alumni networks. That is, they are surrounded by kids who come from rich families. The point however, is so very few of the students at Middlebury are from the bottom quintiles. Those lucky few who go to a place like Middlebury will do very well. Overall social mobility is low at Middlebury, since most of the kids come from upper quintiles and they can’t really go up.

Places like the CTCL schools (Knox, Allegheny, Beloit, Ursinus) tend to have a broader distribution of students among the quintiles, since they are very generous. However, since they don’t have too many kids in the top quintiles, or the top 1%, the social capital isn’t as strong for the kids at the bottom.

Of course pre-professional programs tend to skew things like engineering schools.

I missed my final edit…here it is…

The fact that CUNY and UC schools are dominating the boards doesn’t mean there aren’t private Liberal Arts Colleges that are generous across the board and pretty committed to social mobility - they just won’t see as many salient changes as the CUNY’s will (1 and often 2 quintiles of income group movement or more) since they don’t have as many students in the bottom two quintiles. The CUNYs have a higher percentage of kids in the lower quintiles.

Unfortunately there is a paywall here, but if you type in a school you can see some detailed outcomes. Scroll down and see what the percentage chance a poor kid has of becoming rich (moving from bottom to top quintile), and the mobility index (chance of someone moving up 2 quintiles).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

CUNY and UC are doing more for a larger number of kids than, let’s say a school like Middlebury College. However, a poor kid at Middlebury has a slightly better shot at becoming rich that a kid at CUNY/Baruch, since they build social capital and make use of excellent alumni networks. That is, they are surrounded by kids who come from rich families. The point however, is so very few of the students at Middlebury are from the bottom quintiles. Those lucky few who go to a place like Middlebury will do very well. Overall social mobility is low at Middlebury, since most of the kids come from upper quintiles and they can’t really go up. What’s interesting is that the chance of a poor kid becoming rich is still pretty high at a place like Baruch (only slightly lower than Middlebury). So Baruch is high on social mobility overall and high on a chance of a poor kid becoming rich.

Places like the CTCL schools (Knox, Allegheny, Beloit, Ursinus) tend to have a broader distribution of students among the quintiles, since they are very generous and offer merit aid. However, since they don’t have too many kids in the top quintiles, or the top 1%, the social capital isn’t as strong for the kids at the bottom. So social mobility higher than a Middlebury and lower than a Baruch, since they are more broadly distributed than either. The chance of a poor kid becoming rich is lower, too, since they have less in the top 1% to prime the alumni networks.

Of course pre-professional programs tend to skew things upward for median income like engineering and heavy STEM schools, and, of course, places that focus on business and finance. Artsy schools (heavy in Theater, Dance, Creative Writing) skew things in the opposite direction - even rich kids from these schools tend to make lower salaries.