Education gap? No, it’s chasm!
Stark difference in city by race, money & nabe: study
White New Yorkers and residents of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods are significantly more likely to have college degrees than Blacks, Hispanics and those who live in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, new research finds.
In wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side, nearly nine out of every 10 working adults finished college.
But only one in 10 working adults in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood has a college degree, researchers from the Center for an Urban Future found.
There are also stark disparities by race, the study found. Nearly two-thirds of white New Yorkers have a bachelor’s degree, compared with less than one-fifth of Hispanic city residents, the data shows.
“New York City is home to an almost unparalleled concentration of highly educated people,” the authors wrote. But they also saw “glaring and persistent educational attainment gaps by race, ethnicity and geography.”
Researchers say the effects of the deep divides in educational attainment by race and geography ripple through an economy where the highest-paying and most stable jobs are increasingly reserved for those with college degrees.
“The jobs that are growing disproportionately go to folks with a college credential,” said Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future.
“It’s going to be awfully difficult to make meaningful progress in creating a more equitable economy in New York without closing these stark disparities in educational attainment,” Bowles said.
Those disparate educational outcomes can show up even within a single neighborhood.
In Brooklyn’s Bushwick, more than 70% of white residents have a college degree, compared with 25% of Black residents and 14% of Hispanic residents.
Researchers say the biggest overall gains in college attainment in the past decade have come in neighborhoods where gentrification has accelerated, like Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill/ Brownsville neighborhood — which is northwest of Broadway Junction — and Jackson Heights, Queens.
But the gains have not been evenly distributed.
In Brownsville, the share of white residents with a bachelor’s degree shot up from 11.4% to 42.7% in the past decade, while college attainment increased by only 4 percentage points for Black residents and 6 percentage points for Hispanic residents.
Researchers also found Black and Hispanic New Yorkers were more likely to have some college courses under their belt, but no degree — meaning they’re more likely to be saddled with debt without the increased earning potential of a college degree.
Nearly 700,000 working 25- to 64-year-old adults citywide started college but never finished, the report found.
Researchers say that’s an obvious place to start efforts to boost educational attainment citywide.
“City leaders should launch a major campaign to help more of the nearly 700,000 working-age New Yorkers with some college but no degree to access job-relevant, credit-bearing courses that can help them reach the finish line,” authors wrote.
Other proposals include boosting funding for programs like CUNY’s ASAP, which provides intensive support for vulnerable students, and expanding access to programs that can offer college credentials without four years of study.
Report authors encouraged the new crop of mayoral candidates to set a goal of increasing college attainment among Black and Hispanic New Yorkers by 50% in the next 10 years.
“We think they should think big and not just think around the edges,” Bowles said, “and then work backward and get there.”