WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States will not reach the Obama administration’s goal of becoming the most college-educated country in the world by 2020 unless the country eliminates the income-based inequalities that cause a gap in degree attainment between rich and poor.
Such was the conclusion of a new report released Wednesday by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
“Income-based inequality must be seen as a serious problem,” Dr. Andre Nichols, author of the study, titled Developing 20/20 Vision on the 2020 Degree Attainment Goal: The Threat of Income-Based Inequality in Education, said at a panel discussion at the Capitol Visitors Center.
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to reach the 2020 goal unless we get serious and target resources toward students that need them most.”
To illustrate his point, Nichols — both in his talk and in the report — disaggregated degree attainment data in the United States in order to take a more nuanced look at how the nation ranks in comparison to other nations in degree attainment.
For example, while the United States ranks eighth in the world in bachelor’s degree attainment by age 24, according to the report, the nation would actually rank first if all Americans got a degree at the same rate — 58.8 percent — as the upper-income half of the 25- to 34-year-old population.
However, if all Americans earned a degree at the same rate of the lower income half of the population, which is 12 percent, America would trail all but Brazil among the top 36 developed nations in degree attainment, the report shows.
“If we had addressed this (disparity) we would have already reached the president’s goal,” Nichols said. “This problem is keeping us from remaining economically competitive and achieving the 2020 goal.”
The 20/20 report also took aim at federal funding formulas that reward states that spend more on students at the K-12 level, criticized Congress for even thinking about scaling back the Pell Grant program and recommended setting and tracking goals around reducing income-based inequalities on “key educational outcomes.”
