More young adults from low-income families are taking college classes, but the completion rate — only 11 percent — didn’t improve significantly from 2000 to 2008, concludes A Portrait of Low-Income Young Adults in Education from the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
About 10 percent who complete degrees don’t escape poverty, the report found.
That contradicts President Obama’s assertion that “the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education,” IHEP noted. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Poor students go to college academically unprepared, the report says, and, amid competing family and work obligations, they accumulate debt “that could have been avoided by pursuing a different type of degree or a credential.”
Many go to unselective colleges and don’t prepare for high-paying careers.
Hispanic students showed the largest percentage-point increase, to 37 percent from 29 percent. Low-income Asian and Pacific Islander and white students enrolled at the highest rates in 2008, 62 percent and 51 percent, respectively; the greatest proportions of low-income degree holders were also from those groups.
On a happier note, the College Success Foundation reports that 97 percent of its low-income, disadvantaged scholars earn a high school diploma, and 68 percent of those who go to a four-year college earn a degree.
