IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/cshedu/qt68p432p0.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Poor and the Rich: A Look at Economic Stratification and Academic Performance Among Undergraduate Students in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Douglass, John Aubrey
  • Thomson, Gregg

Abstract

A number of national studies point to a trend in which highly selective and elite private and public universities are becoming less accessible to lower-income students. At the same time there have been surprisingly few studies of the actual characteristics and academic experiences of low-income students or comparisons of their undergraduate experience with those of more wealthy students. This paper explores the divide between poor and rich students, first comparing a group of selective US institutions and their number and percentage of Pell Grant recipients and then, using institutional data and results from the University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), presenting an analysis of the high percentage of low-income undergraduate students within the University of California system — who they are, their academic performance and quality of their undergraduate experience. Among our conclusions: The University of California has a strikingly higher number of low-income students when compared to a sample group of twenty-four other selective public and private universities and colleges, including the Ivy Leagues and a sub-group of other California institutions such as Stanford and the University of Southern California. Indeed, the UC campuses of Berkeley, Davis, and UCLA each have more Pell Grant students than all of the eight Ivy League institutions combined. However, one out of three Pell Grant recipients at UC have at least one parent with a four-year college degree, calling into question the assumption that “low-income” and “first-generation” are interchangeable groups of students. Low-income students, and in particular Pell Grant recipients, at UC have only slightly lower GPAs than their more wealthy counterparts in both math, science and engineering, and in humanities and social science fields. Contrary to some previous research, we find that low-income students have generally the same academic and social satisfaction levels; and are similar in their sense of belonging within their campus communities. However, there are some intriguing results across UC campuses, with low-income students somewhat less satisfied at those campuses where there are more affluent student bodies and where lower-income students have a smaller presence.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglass, John Aubrey & Thomson, Gregg, 2008. "The Poor and the Rich: A Look at Economic Stratification and Academic Performance Among Undergraduate Students in the United States," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt68p432p0, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt68p432p0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/68p432p0.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gordon C. Winston & Catharine B. Hill & David J. Zimmerman, 2007. "A Note on How Well Available Income Information Identifies Low-Income Students," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-71, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    2. Gary R. Pike & George D. Kuh, 2005. "First- and Second-Generation College Students: A Comparison of Their Engagement and Intellectual Development," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(3), pages 276-300, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. MacLachlan, Anne J, 2017. "PRESERVATION OF EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION: Tacit Knowledge, Implicit Bias and University Faculty by Anne J. MacLachlan, UC Berkeley CSHE 1.17 (January 2017)," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt8kh0c74r, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    2. MacLachlan, Anne J., 2017. "PRESERVATION OF EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION: Tacit Knowledge, Implicit Bias and University Faculty by Anne J. MacLachlan, UC Berkeley CSHE 1.17 (January 2017)," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt5zv6c3nj, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pedro de Araujo & James Murray, 2010. "Estimating the Effects of Dormitory Living on Student Performance," CAEPR Working Papers 2010-002, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    2. Pedro de Araujo & James Murray, 2010. "Estimating the effects of dormitory living on student performance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(1), pages 866-878.
    3. Karen C. H. Zhoc & Beverley J. Webster & Ronnel B. King & Johnson C. H. Li & Tony S. H. Chung, 2019. "Higher Education Student Engagement Scale (HESES): Development and Psychometric Evidence," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 60(2), pages 219-244, March.
    4. Gregg Thomson, 2011. "DIVERSITY MATTERS: New Directions for Institutional Research on Undergraduate Racial/Ethnic and Economic Diversity," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt0k62w21b, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    5. Mitchell D. Lingo & Wei-Lin Chen, 2023. "Righteous, Reveler, Achiever, Bored: A Latent Class Analysis of First-Year Student Involvement," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 64(6), pages 893-932, September.
    6. Ricardo Cunningham, 2016. "Student Response Systems (SRS) and the Performance of First-Generation Students Majoring in Business," Journal of Business, LAR Center Press, vol. 1(4), pages 1-12, September.
    7. Brint, Steven & Allison M. Cantwell & Robert A. Hannerman, 2008. "Two Cultures: Undergraduate Academic Engagement," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt53g8521z, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    8. Ethan Youngerman & Laura S. Dahl & Matthew J. Mayhew, 2021. "Examining the Psychometric Properties of a New Integrative Learning Scale," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 62(6), pages 829-854, September.
    9. Prashant Mahajan & Suresh Golahit, 2017. "Engineering a Woman: Marketing Opportunities and Challenges in India," Post-Print hal-01484219, HAL.
    10. Prashant Mahajan & Suresh Golahit, 2016. "By The People For The People: People's Influence On Students In Selecting Technical Educational Institute," Post-Print hal-01483632, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt68p432p0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://escholarship.org/uc/cshe/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.