In identifying whether universities provide opportunities for low-income
students, there is a measurement challenge: different institutions face
students with different incomes and preparation.
This study shows how a
hypothetical university's “relevant pool”–the students from whom it
could plausibly draw–affects popular measures: the Pell share, Bottom
Quintile share, and Intergenerational Mobility. The study demonstrates that universities ranked highly on the
popular measures can actually serve disproportionately few low-income
students and that universities slated for penalties on
the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately many
low-income students.
Furthermore, the Intergenerational Mobility measure
penalizes universities that face relatively equal income distributions,
which are probably good for low-income students, and rewards
universities that face very unequal income distributions.
In short, by
confounding differences in university effort with differences in
circumstances, the popular measures could distort university decision
making and produce unintended consequences.
The authors demonstrate that, with
well-thought-out data analysis, it is possible to create benchmarks that
actually measure what they are intended to measure. In particular, we
present a measure that overcomes the deficiencies of the popular
measures and is informative about all, not just low-income, students.
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