Over the past several decades, Washington University in St. Louis has evolved from a locally oriented institution to one of national prominence. It has built dozens of gleaming new buildings and established academic programs that are now ranked among the country’s best. More than nine in 10 of its students graduate in four years. And, with an endowment of $6.7-billion, it is now one of the wealthiest colleges in the nation.
In its rise, however, Washington University earned a less-flattering distinction. It has become, by one measure, the least economically diverse top college in the United States. Just 6 percent of its undergraduates received a Pell Grant last year, federal data show.
Students like Jordan Victorian, a sophomore and one of about 500 Washington University students with a Pell Grant last year, worry that his and other elite institutions’ poor records of enrolling students like him are perpetuating class divides, shutting students out simply because they cannot pay.
“If these top universities are producing our next generation of leaders,” Mr. Victorian says, “we need everyone to be represented there so that our next generation of leaders truly reflects everyone in the country.”
Washington University administrators say they want to improve the institution’s record. Officials announced late last year a plan to increase the share of students who receive Pell Grants to 13 percent by 2020, including by spending $25-million more each year on aid to low-income students, on top of the roughly $100-million the university now provides.
If the university meets its goal, the proportion of low-income students enrolled there would move Washington University closer to its peers. But it still would rank near the bottom. At some similar institutions, like the University of Southern California, Pell Grant recipients make up more than 20 percent of undergraduates.
Washington University has received scrutiny for a number of years for its poor record on enrolling low-income students. Students like Sonya Schoenberger, a senior who is part of a group that advocates for more socioeconomic diversity on the campus, say the issue gained traction after recent media attention, and, in particular, a New York Times article that identified Washington University as the nation’s least economically diverse top college.
The university’s plan to enroll more students from low-income families also comes a year and a half into the tenure of Holden Thorp, the university’s provost, who was previously chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When he started his job as provost, he says, increasing the number of low-income students was among his top priorities. Mr. Thorp says that expanding college access was an effort administrators were weighing before the recent news coverage but that the publicity did make the university act more quickly.
“This is something that needed to be done, and if the media attention accelerated it, that’s a good thing,” Mr. Thorp says. “In the 20th century, when people were going to school on the GI Bill and land-grant universities were thriving, higher education was an extraordinary engine of opportunity. I think that has slipped in recent years, not just at Wash U. but in higher education in general. We have an obligation to do what we can to address the persistent inequality that plagues America.”
Angela Miller, a professor of art history, has been advocating for more economic diversity at Washington University for years. When she started working there, in 1985, before the university had built up a prominent, national reputation, Ms. Miller had only recently heard of the college. As the university scrambled to raise its profile, Ms. Miller says, it failed to focus on broadening access to its campus.
“The university has shown marvelous commitment to starting conversations about racial inequality in St. Louis, especially since Ferguson,” she says, referring to a police shooting last year in a St. Louis suburb that drew national attention. “They need to make the same commitment to socioeconomic diversity. It’s as pressing an issue for our future as a nation as is race.”
At Washington University, where annual tuition is $47,300, the goal to increase its share of low-income students translates to about 120 more Pell Grant recipients in each freshman class of about 1,700.
The goal is “somewhat modest” but a good start, says Ms. Schoenberger, who is part of the group Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity, which has been urging the college for years to improve its record on admitting low-income students. She says she’s also concerned that Pell Grants are an imperfect gauge of economic diversity on a campus, and she hopes an increase in students with Pell Grants doesn’t lead to a corresponding decrease in lower-middle-income students.
Changing Campus Culture
To significantly increase the number of low-income students graduating from top colleges, institutions need to do more than spend more money on aid. Elite colleges like Washington University also need to become more welcoming to low-income students, says Don Hossler, director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington.
Mr. Hossler, who conducted a study of how high-ability students select colleges, tells the story of interviewing a valedictorian of a rural high school in Indiana who had a scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University.
“When she drove up to the parking lot in a 10-year-old Ford Pinto and saw all the BMWs,” Mr. Hossler says, “she knew right away she wouldn’t feel comfortable there.” About 14 percent of Vanderbilt’s students are Pell Grant recipients this year, placing it in about the middle of the pack for elite colleges.
While colleges can’t do much to control what cars are parked in their lots, they can carry out other changes to make their campuses more inclusive, student activists say. Universities can help change a student culture where affluence is often taken for granted, says Chase Sackett, a former student who started Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity in 2009.
Mr. Sackett founded the group after he noticed low-income friends were struggling with class issues on the campus. Constantly dealing with not having enough money to eat at a restaurant with fellow students, for example, can be psychologically draining and affect academic performance, Mr. Sackett says.
Universities can provide more orientation sessions for low-income students, he says, and better train resident advisers to be sensitive to issues low-income students face on an affluent campus. Student groups can also help, he adds, by providing grants to students who may need money for study trips they otherwise couldn’t afford.
“It’s not just how much aid you’re offering to students,” Mr. Sackett says. “It’s also about whether low-income students you accept want to attend your school.”
Washington University administrators are seeking to improve their support systems for low-income students as the university also sets aside more money for aid. In December, Washington University announced the creation of an advisory group of administrators that will recommend how the university could better support low-income students.
The university is also starting its own chapter of College Advising Corps, which seeks to provide low-income high-school students with better college advising. It plans to hire a director and eight recent Washington University graduates to go into local high schools and identify students who are ready for college but may not know it. Corps members help the students fill out college forms and apply for aid.
“We think we can increase our numbers pretty significantly by just increasing the financial-aid budget,” Mr. Thorp says. “But we want to couple that with getting even more applications from attractive low-income students, and we believe that will happen.”
‘Very Problematic’
Students and professors have applauded the university’s recent efforts. Still, many students want the university to take bigger steps. They oppose the university’s admissions process, which is need-aware. That means that the university may consider an applicant’s ability to pay when making decisions about whether to admit him or her. Washington University is an outlier. Of the 25 wealthiest colleges, based on endowment value per undergraduate, only Washington University and Washington and Lee are need-aware. The rest have need-blind policies—not considering applicants’ ability to pay when making admissions decisions.
In a petition last year, hundreds of Washington University students demanded that the university increase its share of students with Pell Grants to the median of peer institutions. The petitioners called the need-aware admissions policy discriminatory, adding that Washington University could find a way to pay to admit those students if it wanted.
Becoming need-blind in admissions is not currently on the table, Mr. Thorp says. But it is an issue, he says, that “we may address in the very, very long term.”
“We don’t admit people that we don’t feel we can take care of,” the provost says.
Moving the needle on access poses trade-offs for universities. Admitting students with high financial need comes with the financial cost of providing aid and also with the opportunity cost of not accepting qualified students who could pay their way.
“The institution has to be willing to forgo that income, and it’s a decision that takes some courage,” says Michael Bastedo, director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. “I hope more and more institutions do this.”
Lauren Chase, a sophomore at Washington University and a former president of the student group advocating for socioeconomic diversity, says her goal now is to make sure the university provides support services for the low-income students it admits. The admissions practices of Washington University and other elite colleges, she says, are eroding the meritocratic ideals of higher education’s role in society.
“For Washington University and many of these other top schools that research and teach about issues of inequality to be playing a role in that,” she says, “that is very problematic.”
Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.
Correction (2/26/2015, 1:39 p.m.): This article originally misidentified the year of Lauren Chase, a student at Washington University. She is a sophomore, not a senior. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
