What Have We Done to the Talented Poor?
Sunday's New York Times carried a front page story on a crisis in American higher education. I think that's excellent, and I'm thrilled for Caroline Hoxby and Chris Avery, whose research is featured. These economists managed to draw national attention to a major problem-- despite decades of public and private investment, barely 1 in 10 children from low-income families earns a bachelor's degree. And this isn't because they aren't smart, or aren't taking college admissions exams-- plenty of them taking many of the right steps towards college. But they are not ending up there. Hoxby and Avery begin to help us understand why by evaluating the merits of several urban legends, two of which are repeated by seemingly every elite college admissions officer in the country: (1) "We don't have more Pell recipients on campus because there are simply too few students from low-income families academically qualified to get in here." In other words, bright...