Category: Education

The National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey has a breakdown of what types of students make up each kind of postsecondary school. I have been interested for some time in the breakdown of undergraduates by household income, and it provides those numbers (p. 72 of the pdf). There is a lot in the survey and I… Continue reading How badly do 4-year public and private schools skew rich?

I wrote about poor people in the top 200 colleges a few days ago. As I explained then, I am interested to see how much Pell Grant money schools get per student. I think this is a better measurement to see how much a school skews poor than simply looking at the percentage of students… Continue reading Poor people in the top 200 colleges II

The term “college costs” is used so sloppily that I have no idea in most cases what anyone actually means by it. I’ve written before about the difference between 1) the sticker price of college (what colleges quote their prices at), 2) the net price of college (what the average student actually pays), and 3)… Continue reading What are college costs?

The most confusing argument I see in the higher education funding debate is the one that basically proceeds by saying that 1) human capital is super-important and that 2) therefore we should publicly fund its development. Assume (1) is true. How does (2) follow? Usually arguments like this have a second premise. So for basic… Continue reading Does crushing debt discourage college enrollment?

So I am playing around with the IPEDS Delta Cost Database, which is loaded with tons of data on thousands of higher education institutions in the United States. I noticed that their data allowed for a comparison that I have been curious about for a while now, which is how much institutions are getting in… Continue reading Poor people in the top 200 colleges