Record Numbers of Low-Income Students Enrolling in Prestigious Colleges
Some of the country’s most prestigious colleges are enrolling record numbers of low-income students, a growing admissions priority in the absence of affirmative action. America’s top campuses remain crowded with wealth, but some universities have accelerated efforts to reach a wider swath of the country, recruiting more in urban and rural areas and offering free tuition for students whose families are not among the highest earners.
At Princeton University, this year’s freshman class has more low-income students than ever. One in four are eligible for federal Pell grants, which are scholarships reserved for students with the most significant financial need. That’s a leap from two decades ago, when fewer than 1 in 10 were eligible. “The only way to increase socioeconomic diversity is to be intentional about it,” Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said in a statement. “Socioeconomic diversity will increase if and only if college presidents make it a priority.”
Colleges Set Records for Enrollment of Low-Income Students
Last year, Princeton set aggressive goals to recruit more low-income students in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in higher education. Without the ability to consider race, officials wrote in a campus report, focusing on economic diversity offers “the university’s greatest opportunity to attract diverse talent.” The country’s most selective colleges still enroll large proportions of students from the wealthiest 1% of American families. Many of those campuses have tried for years to shed reputations of elitism, with only gradual changes in enrollment.
At 17 highly selective colleges that have released new data, almost all saw increases in Pell-eligible students between 2023 and this year, according to an Associated Press analysis. Most saw increases in consecutive years, and none saw a significant decrease in aggregate over the two years. Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all have set enrollment records for Pell-eligible students in the past two years.
Racial Diversity Does Not Necessarily Follow Economic Diversity
On many campuses, officials hoped the focus on economic diversity would preserve racial diversity — Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous Americans have the country’s highest poverty rates. But even as low-income numbers climb, many elite campuses have seen racial diversity decrease. Without the emphasis on income, those decreases might have been even steeper, said Richard Kahlenberg, a researcher at the Progressive Policy Institute who advocates for class-based affirmative action. He called the latest Pell figures “a significant step in the right direction.”
Swarthmore College saw the most dramatic leap in Pell enrollment, jumping from 17% to 30% last year. While many campuses were delaying scholarship decisions until the government resolved problems with a new financial aid form, Swarthmore used other data to figure out applicants’ financial need. That allowed Swarthmore to offer scholarships to students while they were still awaiting decisions from other schools.
The Approach Risks Federal Scrutiny
In legal memos, the White House has alleged that prioritizing students based on earnings or geography amounts to a “racial proxy” in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision against affirmative action. In a June letter, Trump officials accused the University of California-Los Angeles of “race-based admissions in all but name.” It criticized UCLA for considering factors like applicants’ family income, ZIP code, and high school profile.
Colleges often weigh that kind of information in admissions decisions. Yet the Trump administration has declared that the Supreme Court decision outlaws a wide range of long-accepted education practices, including scholarships targeting students in underserved areas. Already, there are signs of an impact. Earlier this year, the College Board — the nonprofit that oversees the SAT — suddenly discontinued an offering that gave admissions offices a wealth of information about applicants, including earnings data from their neighborhoods.
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