Without affirmative action, elite colleges are prioritizing economic diversity in admissions

By COLLIN BINKLEY AP Instruction Writer WASHINGTON AP A few of the country s majority prestigious colleges are enrolling record numbers of low-income students a growing admissions priority in the absence of affirmative action Related Articles Trump s crackdown on immigration is taking a toll on child care workers Most of Massachusetts parents aid school cell phone ban poll shows Prospective employees companies negotiate fast-changing new world of AI Teaching Department workers targeted in layoffs are returning to tackle civil rights backlog US appeals court rejects Trump administration bid to halt grants for school mental wellness workers America s top campuses remain crowded with wealth but various universities have accelerated efforts to reach a wider swath of the country recruiting more in urban and rural areas and offering free tuition for students whose families are not among the highest earners The strategy could lead to friction with the federal governing body The Trump administration which has pulled funding from elite colleges over a range of grievances has suggested it s illegal to target needier students College leaders believe they re on solid legal ground At Princeton University this year s freshman class has more low-income students than ever One in four are eligible for federal Pell grants which are scholarships reserved for students with the bulk considerable financial need That s a leap from two decades ago when fewer than in were eligible The only way to increase socioeconomic diversity is to be intentional about it Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber stated in a report Socioeconomic diversity will increase if and only if college presidents make it a priority Last year Princeton set aggressive goals to recruit more low-income students in the wake of the Supreme Court s ban on affirmative action in higher mentoring Without the ability to consider race administrators wrote in a campus document focusing on economic diversity offers the university s greatest opportunity to attract diverse talent The country s the greater part selective colleges still enroll large proportions of students from the wealthiest of American families Multiple of those campuses have tried for years to shed reputations of elitism with only gradual changes in enrollment Colleges set records for enrollment of low-income students Only a small fraction of the nation s colleges have publicly disclosed their low-income enrollments this year and national information won t be published by the federal establishment until next year But early numbers show a trend At highly selective colleges that have disclosed new content almost all saw increases in Pell-eligible students between and this year according to an Associated Press analysis The bulk saw increases in consecutive years and none saw a key decrease in aggregate over the two years Yale Duke Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Machinery all have set enrollment records for Pell-eligible students in the past two years Part of the uptick owes to a federal expansion that made more students eligible for Pell grants last year But campus leaders also believe the increases reflect their own efforts The numbers in MIT s freshman class have climbed by over the past two years and low-income students account for more than a quarter of this year s class MIT executives cited its framework providing free tuition for families that earn less than a year MIT has invariably been an engine of opportunity for low-income students and we are dedicated to ensuring we can make an MIT tuition accessible for students from every walk of life Stu Schmill MIT s dean of admissions explained in a report Nationwide roughly a third of undergraduate students have received Pell grants in latest years Two years ago Amherst College in Massachusetts made tuition free for students in the bottom of U S earnings It also started covering meals and housing for those below the median income and it stopped prioritizing children of alumni and donors in admissions decisions Since then low-income enrollment has risen steadily reaching in new students this year At the same time the admissions office has stepped up recruiting in overlooked parts of the country from big cities to small towns When we go out and talk to students it s not in the fanciest ZIP codes explained Matthew McGann dean of admissions It s in places where we know there s a lot of talent but not a lot of opportunity Racial diversity does not necessarily follow economic diversity On a multitude of campuses representatives hoped the focus on economic diversity would preserve racial diversity Black Hispanic and Indigenous Americans have the country s highest poverty rates But even as low-income numbers climb various elite campuses have seen racial diversity decrease Without the emphasis on income those decreases might have been even steeper mentioned Richard Kahlenberg a researcher at the Progressive Agenda Institute who advocates for class-based affirmative action He called the latest Pell figures a critical step in the right direction Economic diversity is central in its own right he disclosed It s essential that America s leadership class which disproportionately derives from selective colleges include people who ve faced economic hardships in life Swarthmore College saw the largest part dramatic leap in Pell enrollment jumping from to last year While a multitude of campuses were delaying scholarship decisions until the regime resolved problems with a new financial aid form Swarthmore used other figures to figure out applicants financial need That allowed Swarthmore to offer scholarships to students while they were still awaiting decisions from other schools More financially disadvantaged students ended up enrolling at Swarthmore than functionaries expected College leaders also credit their work to reduce campus costs laundry is free and students get yearly credits for textbooks for example Yet Swarthmore saw its Black enrollment fall to of its freshman class this year down from the year before In a race neutral circumstances those numbers are likely to drop Jim Bock the admissions dean revealed in a declaration Not all minority students are low-income and not all majority students have key financial means The approach risks federal scrutiny In legal memos the White House has alleged that prioritizing students based on earnings or geography amounts to a racial proxy in violation of the Supreme Court s decision against affirmative action In a June letter Trump administrators accused the University of California-Los Angeles of race-based admissions in all but name It criticized UCLA for considering factors like applicants family income ZIP code and high school profile Colleges often weigh that kind of information in admissions decisions Yet the Trump administration has declared that the Supreme Court decision outlaws a wide range of long-accepted tuition practices including scholarships targeting students in underserved areas Already there are signs of an impact Earlier this year the College Board the nonprofit that oversees the SAT suddenly discontinued an offering that gave admissions offices a wealth of information about applicants including earnings statistics from their neighborhoods Kahlenberg and others see it as a retreat in the face of establishment pressure The College Board offered little explanation citing changes to federal and state agenda around the use of demographic information in admissions The Associated Press learning coverage receives financial help from multiple private foundations AP is solely responsible for all content Find AP s standards for working with philanthropies a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP org