Does Education Increase Economic Mobility?

It is an article of faith in the United States that more education leads to greater earnings, and the data back it up. In 2005, for instance, college graduates earned $25,000 more on average than high school graduates. A two-year associate’s degree brought an average annual premium of $8,500 over a high school diploma.

However, family background also plays an important role in determining one’s educational trajectory and economic success as an adult, according to a new Brookings Institution report, Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America, by Ron Haskins, Julia B. Isaacs, and Isabel Sawhill. Not only are the children of relatively well-off parents more likely to earn more as adults, but they are more likely to get a college degree than children of parents with lower incomes (as the figure below demonstrates). The policy challenge is to make it possible for more young people from the bottom quintiles of the family income distribution to access higher education and succeed in college.

One promising avenue for many low-income students is community college. Because of their relative low cost and accessibility, community colleges serve large numbers of low-income and first-generation college students. But to achieve a degree, students most stay in school. Unfortunately, nearly half of all students who start at a community college fail to earn a degree or transfer to another school within six years — often because of financial problems or because they come to college inadequately prepared to take college-level classes.

MDRC has a group of projects focused on designing and evaluating promising interventions to help community college students remain in school and earn credentials. Opening Doors is testing reforms in curricula and instruction, enhanced student services, and financial aid supplements. The results from two programs — one in Louisiana that offered performance-based scholarships and another in New York that placed incoming freshmen in “learning communities” — are particularly encouraging.

MDRC is participating in Lumina Foundation for Education’s ambitious Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count initiative, which involves 82 community colleges in 15 states and many national partner organizations. Its goal is to raise the achievement of groups that have traditionally faced the most significant barriers to success, including low-income students and students of color. Participating colleges examine student transcripts and other data to identify factors that may contribute to or impede students’ progress; they then use this information to plan improved instruction and other college services.

Other MDRC projects are investigating emergency financial aid programs, learning communities, and programs that integrate student support services with intensive academic instruction and supports. Finally, MDRC is a partner in the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR), which is housed at the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. Supported by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education, NCPR is focused on studying the effects of programs designed to help students make the transition to college and master basic skills needed to advance to a degree. For more info, join the NCPR email list.

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