May 18, 2017 by Philip Lewenstein

USC Shows How Top Colleges Can Connect With High-Achieving Low-Income Students

Before my oldest daughter enrolled in the University of Southern California (USC) in fall 2001, I had three perceptions about the institution. I believed that the university had a great football team, that it was located in a rough area of Los Angeles and thus not safe, and that it enrolled primarily rich kids, thus earning the acronym University of Spoiled Children. One perception was accurate, but two were not.

My perception about the football team was accurate. I had seen and interviewed O.J. Simpson in fall l968 after the defending 1967 national champion Trojans staged a second-half comeback to defeat the University of Minnesota Gophers in Minneapolis. In the early l970s, as the night sports editor for the San Bernardino Sun Telegram, I observed our sports reporters cover great USC teams, including the l972 national champions. After my daughter enrolled at USC, I adopted the Trojans as my favorite college football team because I was frustrated with 50 years of Gopher football futility. The Trojans have rarely disappointed me as evidenced by eleven national championships and, most recently, their dramatic 2017 Rose Bowl victory.

When I visited USC in spring 2001 with my daughter, who was accepted by the School of Architecture and invited to interview for a scholarship, I discovered a beautiful campus (often called an urban oasis) minutes away from downtown Los Angeles. The lush campus is surrounded by some rough areas, but campus officials emphasized their focus on student safety. My daughter had a safe, seven-year stay on campus, earning two degrees in architecture.

My perception of USC, a private nonprofit institution of 44,000 students, serving mostly rich children was dispelled recently as I read a newspaper column and a public-policy report. In “Lifting Kids to College,” Frank Bruni, Op Ed columnist for The New York Times on April 26, 2017, highlighted the success of the USC Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), the university’s signature college-preparation program that enrolls close to 1,000 students each year.

NAI is a rigorous, seven-year precollege enrichment program designed to prepare students from South and East Los Angeles for admission to a college or university. Students must commit to a seven-year plan of after-school tutoring coupled with Saturday morning classes. Also, parents are required to attend a biweekly Family Development Institute program to create a 360-degree, hands-on approach to support student academic goals and study habits. Students who remain in the program in good standing from sixth grade until their high school-graduation are eligible for a full scholarship to USC if they meet admission requirements. Since its first graduating class in 1997, NAI has seen almost 1,000 students complete its program; 83 percent have enrolled as freshmen at four-year universities with 35 percent enrollment at USC, according to the USC website.

The NAI program is especially impressive because it embodies several characteristics of effective  precollege  programs: early awareness starting in sixth grade, parental involvement, campus visits to demystify college, K-12 partnerships, mentoring before and during college enrollment, and financial rewards. USC’s success in enrolling and graduating low-income students is remarkable  because the university accepts only 16.5 percent of applicants and because total costs are approaching $70,000 annually for tuition, fees, room and board, books and supplies, transportation, and personal expenses.

NAI is only part of USC’s effort to address inadequate socioeconomic diversity in the country’s most selective colleges. “Although USC has often been caricatured as a rich kids’ playground, it outpaces most of its peers in trying to lift disadvantaged kids to better lives,” Bruni says. “Those peers should learn from its example.”

Bruni’s point is highlighted by a new 2017 report, The 20% Solution: Selective Colleges Can Afford to Admit More Pell Grant Recipients, by Anthony P. Carnevale and Martin Van Der Werf of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Using an analysis of   federal Pell Grant (need-based grants to low-income students for higher education) distribution, the authors note that the nation’s most selective colleges are attended mostly by affluent students. Disparities in enrollment and graduation rates by economic class are stunning, they say.

More than half the students from the top quartile of family incomes complete college, but less than one in ten from the bottom quartile do, Carnevale and Van Der Werf report, adding that the growth in wealth inequality since the l980s is mostly due to this post-secondary gap.

Both Bruni and the Georgetown authors refer to a  recent report that found 38 elite colleges had more students from families in the top 1 percent of incomes (over $630,000) than from families in the bottom 60 percent of income (less than $65,000 per year). Bruni notes that 13.9 percent of USC students are in the 1 percent bracket while 21.9 percent are from the bottom 60 percent of family incomes. “There are many reasons, principally a failure to identify and to recruit disadvantaged  kids whose abilities and accomplishments make them perfectly eligible for elite colleges with low acceptance rates,” Bruni says.

The Georgetown authors assert that the best colleges have the opportunity to serve more low income students by expanding enrollment of Pell Grant recipients. Most Pell Grant recipients now go to colleges—typically two-year community colleges and regional public universities—from which they have only about a 50 percent chance of graduating. Enrolling these students at colleges from which they have close to an 80 percent chance of graduation could go a long way toward advancing equity in the United States by giving students in poor financial circumstances a far greater chance of success, the Georgetown report says.

Selective colleges generally enroll few Pell Grant recipients, and Pell Grant recipients disproportionally attend open-admission colleges and universities, schools that have low graduation rates. The selective colleges with the smallest percentage of Pell Grant recipients are almost all private institutions. The median Pell Grant rate is 14 percent for the top 25 private colleges and universities.

Some of the most selective colleges in the country, however, enroll more than 20 percent Pell Grant recipients. Nearly 24 percent of USC undergraduates are eligible for a Pell Grant, up from 16 percent in 2008. USC has a far greater share of Pell Grant recipients than at almost every other private highly selective college. Nearly three quarters of Pell Grant recipients come from families making less than $30,000 annually.

Clearly, high achieving low income students connect with USC because USC seeks them; USC has developed its own pipeline for high achieving low income students. One of four USC students comes from a low income family. USC not only works with possible future students as early as the sixth grade but also recruits low-income transfer students from two-year colleges.

Bruni points out that “we don’t make enough disadvantaged kids eligible in the first place. We don’t guide them through elementary, middle, and high school so that they have the necessary grades, scores, skills, and mind-sets. “

USC, says Bruni, is working to strengthen the pipeline with K-12 schools, and USC president, C.L. Max Nikias, is urging more colleges to form partnerships with K-12 schools. USC stands out in this regard, Bruni says. In addition to NAI, USC has been involved in establishing three charter high schools serving low-income neighborhoods in the university’s general geographic area.

If the United States is to achieve a more equitable society, it must overcome decades-long gaps in K-12 educational achievement and post-secondary admission, retention, and graduation. Throughout my professional career, I have advocated for and initiated  precollege early awareness programs that include many of the elements used in USC’s work. USC is leading the way by better serving high achieving low income students, along the way correcting my perceptions about the university.