The white-black selective-college attendance gap widens as income rises

Evidence

Nonwhite college enrollment at all institutions—public and private, two-year and four-year—has increased over the past twenty years, from 30 percent in 1996 to 47 percent in 2016. If you separate out the data on twoand four-year institutions, however, white representation is much higher—63 percent at nonprofit four-year colleges in 2016, according to a Pew Research study. White students are five times more likely to go to a selective university than black students. The pattern holds even when controlling for income; in fact, the gap grows as income grows. Higher-income white Americans are four times more likely to attend selective schools than higher-income black Americans, when at the lowest income levels whites are two to three times as likely to attend selective schools as blacks. At every income level a statistically significant higher percentage of white students attend selective universities than blacks. According to a New York Times analysis, even as colleges have begun admitting more nonwhite applicants overall, the percentage of black students at the nation’s top colleges is roughly the same today as it was thirty-five years ago. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 268

Categorization

• QUESTION: What exactly drives the socioeconomic-status-attendance gap to grow at higher income — legacies, donor ties, feeder schools? Worth chasing.