Strategizing around how best to address policy makers on issues of access, student success and the impact of higher education, four prominent scholars gathered at New York University (NYU) on Friday to share their research.
Dr. Stella Flores began Friday’s discussion, “The New Mobility in Higher Education: Does a College Degree Matter?” with some important details about her family background. Her parents were Mexican farm workers who were able to attend college at a time when tuition and grants made it affordable. They earned degrees and had professional careers, which enabled Flores to grow up in a household where a priority was placed on education.
Now, as the associate dean for faculty development and diversity, associate professor of higher education and director of access & equity at the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at NYU, Flores brings a very human element to discussions on whether mobility, like what her parents experienced, is still possible.
At the gathering, three other scholars presented their research and discussed policy implications. They highlighted that in today’s world, different racial, ethnic and economic groups have different access to higher education. The bottom line, they argue, is that the federal and state governments need to invest in higher education because the data shows it will make a difference in people’s economic lives.
“Even if you’re a well prepared student, your odds are still so much lower for getting a college degree that we need to involve more sectors in education to make that last dollar work,” said Flores. “We have to be creative.”
Dr. Paul Attewell, professor of sociology and urban education at the City University of New York Graduate Center gave a presentation titled “The Value of an Incomplete Degree” where he provided a reanalysis of Dr. Raj Chetty’s data.
Chetty, an economist at Harvard, focused on the mobility of students who began in the lowest income group and were able to move to the highest income group. Attewell chose instead, to look at something more modest. The data, he said, showed that 44 percent of teens who began in the lowest group experienced upward economic mobility. Of those who experienced upward mobility, 46 percent never went to college, and even a percentage of those individuals experienced upward mobility.
