Interesting. Ranking colleges on the issue of social mobility is one fraught with issues. If many top Asian and URM candidates are also upper middle class too, that’s an issue. Higher income level students will become less attractive as they will not have the ability to move up to any degree.
And schools with business, cs and engineering have the greatest potential to move up. Which is great. But someone has to be a scholar, a nurse, soldier, teacher, not for profit employee or social worker.
Those noble enterprises are not known for the same income levels to move an average for a school. So they become devalued at the insitutional level as they hurt the school rankings and competitiveness in the college marketplace. Universities have some utility to the culture and fabric of a country beyond pure economic outcomes.