---
title: "College enrollment among low-income students still trails richer groups"
description: "Higher education long has been seen as one of the best ways out of poverty, but connecting low-income students — even the high-achieving ones who presumably are best prepared for college-level work — with colleges and universities remains a challenge. On Thursday, President Obama is expected to meet with more than 100 college presidents at […]"
date: "2014-01-15"
authors:
  - name: "Drew DeSilver"
    job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/drew-desilver/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/01/15/college-enrollment-among-low-income-students-still-trails-richer-groups/"
categories:
  - "Economic Inequality"
  - "Education"
  - "Educational Attainment"
---

# College enrollment among low-income students still trails richer groups

[![collegeStudents_income2](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2014/01/collegeStudents_income2.png)](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/01/collegeStudents_income2.png)

Higher education long has been seen as one of the best ways out of poverty, but connecting low-income students -- even the high-achieving ones who presumably are best prepared for college-level work -- with colleges and universities [remains a challenge](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring%202013/2013a_hoxby.pdf?utm_content=buffer78df6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer). On Thursday, President Obama is [expected to meet](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/us/politics/obama-counts-on-power-of-convening-people-for-change.html?_r=0) with more than 100 college presidents at the White House to discuss ways of enrolling more low-income minority students and helping ensure more of them graduate.

College enrollment among low-income students has generally increased over the past several decades, according to data from the 2013 [Digest of Educational Statistics](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2013menu_tables.asp) (an arm of the federal Education Department). But the Great Recession and weak recovery have eroded the gains of recent years, and middle- and upper-income students remain far more likely to go to college.

In 2012, the most recent year for which NCES figures are available, 50.9% of recent low-income high school completers (a category that includes both graduates and people who completed an equivalency degree and who are ages 16 to 24) were enrolled in a 2- or 4-year college. That's down from the record-high 58.4% in 2007, and just half a percentage point higher than the rate in 1993.

But enrollment rates among middle- and high-income students also have risen, to 64.7% and 80.7%, respectively, in 2012. (NCES defines "low income" as the bottom 20% of all family incomes, "high income" as the top 20%, and "middle income" as the 60% in between.) Looking at it another way, low-income students now are enrolled at about the same rate as middle-income students were in the mid-1980s.

[![collegeStudents_race2](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2014/01/collegeStudents_race2.png)](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/01/collegeStudents_race2.png)

The [2012 data](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables_1.asp) on college entry [by race and ethnicity](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_302.20.asp) show a striking convergence: After decades of marked disparities in enrollment, about two-thirds of white, black and [Hispanic high school completers all were enrolled in college](https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2013/05/09/hispanic-high-school-graduates-pass-whites-in-rate-of-college-enrollment). (Enrollment among Asians continued to far outpace other groups.) But significant differences remain in completing high school: As of the 2009-10 academic year, the average freshman graduation rate in U.S. public high schools was 93.5% for Asian/Pacific Islanders, 83% for whites, 71.4% for Hispanics and 66.1% for blacks.