For low-income students via PHEAA grants

Increase access

The 14 universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education do important work in educating Pennsylvania citizens. Unfortunately, Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center has promoted public universities by cherry-picking data to denigrate the outstanding work of Pennsylvania’s private colleges and universities (“Invest in Pennsylvania’s Working-class Colleges,” June 18 Perspectives).

By using data from only 10 highly selective “elite” private colleges, Mr. Price creates the impression that State System universities lift upward mobility while private colleges don’t. Actually these 10 private colleges move a much higher proportion of their low- and moderate-income students into higher income brackets, but Mr. Price minimizes their success by using an algorithm that emphasizes the percentage of low- and moderate-income students enrolled to begin with.

His algorithm is also unusual in that he classifies “low” income as the bottom 60 percent of income earners and “high” income as the top 40 percent. Therefore, a $100 change in income could move you from the low-income to thehigh-income category.

A recent Brookings Institution report used a more commonly accepted definition of “low” and “high” income from this same data set to compare public and private collegeand university sectors. Low-income students came from families with the lowest 20 percent of income, while high-income came from the highest 20 percent of income. The results for Pennsylvania’s four-year public and private, nonprofit colleges and universities reveal that students from the lowest income quintile are significantly more likely to move to the highest income quintile by their mid-30s if they attend a private college (37 percent for privates vs. 27 percent for publics). Pennsylvania’s private colleges also provide a similar level of access to low-income studentsas the public sector (6 percent for privates vs. 7 percent for publics).

The Brookings report suggests that the state can more effectively increase access and success for low-income students through our PHEAA need-based grant program and letthe students attend the institution — public or private — thatbest meets their needs. DON FRANCIS

President Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania

Harrisburg