Measuring the Wealth Effect in Education – NYTimes.com

• Measuring the Wealth Effect in Education – NYTimes.com

  We are not talking upper middle class but the magnificently wealthy who have advantages over those who may have more talent or natural ability but because of their lack or wealth or class are shut out of prestigious colleges and universities. The lower classes and minorities are left with community colleges or state universities where there is lower funding and questionable instructional quality.

  tags: education learning college universities american wealth

  • it has long been thought easier for the rich man’s son or daughter to get into Harvard. Or Oxford.

  • Dr. Jerrim studied access to high-status universities in Britain, the United States and Australia.

  • “My background is economics, and if you look at the economics, kids that go to certain universities earn a premium on their wages during their working lives over and above the premium you get just by going to college,” Dr. Jerrim said. In the United States that premium is about 6 percent, he said.

  • they seem to influence access to certain jobs and to act as a signal to high-flying graduate recruiters,” he said. “If you take the job of being prime minister of Britain, for example, you almost have to have gone to Oxford.”

  • Dr. Jerrim found that students whose parents come from a professional or managerial background are three times as likely to enter a high status university in Britain or Australia as students with working class parents.

  • The same threefold advantage applied to students attending prestigious public universities in the United States

  • Social background has long been known to be highly correlated with academic achievement

  • In Britain, too, both Oxford and Cambridge have long pointed to a dearth of students from poorer backgrounds who achieve the standard required in exams at the end of high school to be considered for admission to most courses at those universities

  • Dr. Jerrim said he was surprised to discover a considerable gap in access to selective colleges and universities even after accounting for differences in academic performance as measured by grades or standardized tests.

  • In American public universities 60 percent of the access gap between students from wealthy and disadvantaged backgrounds could be explained by academic factors, while in elite private American universities only 48 percent could be accounted for by differences in academic achievement.

  • “What this means is that there are significant numbers of working class children who, even though they have the academic credentials to be admitted to elite colleges, are either not being admitted or choosing not to apply,” he said.

  • Sutton Trust,

  • social mobility.

  • “What John has shown is that if you look at academic achievement, there should be far more kids from lower income backgrounds going to top universities,” Sir Peter Lampl, the organization’s chairman,

  • According to Mr. Lampl, “working class kids feel the admissions procedures are rigged against them.”

  • both Oxford and Cambridge interview candidates, and the interviews are often rigorous — a form of oral examination.

  • Mr. Lampl said, adding that such students “also worry that even if they do get in they won’t fit in.”

  • “The main focus for governments should be on improving achievement for poorer students,

  • using contextual information to give students from disadvantaged backgrounds a fair chance.”

  • “There is no question that, in many countries, children from privileged backgrounds have a much greater chance to enter prestigious universities.”

     

  • “But our data also show that in those countries, success in school is closely related to the social background of students,”

  • “I think the whole system stinks,

  • Until the admissions system is reformed, he added, “I think more kids from Britain should be thinking about studying in the U.S.”

  • But for students from low-income backgrounds Harvard is by far the cheapest.

  • “The generous aid available even to international students should make U.S. universities an extremely attractive option,” Mr. Lampl said.

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