Research has shown that a college degree offers a pathway to increased earnings and upward mobility, but access to and benefits from higher education are unequally distributed, demonstrating the need to boost economic mobility for diverse student populations.

Low-income students see lower average early-career earnings compared to their peers, even those that attended the same colleges. Many institutions, especially those that serve students from historically marginalized backgrounds, are working to bridge those types of gaps.

A new analysis from nonprofit research firm Public Agenda examines, in part, how some colleges are tailoring their student support services to low-income students to improve their economic mobility.

The presidents of three of those institutions — Ferris State University, Lamar University and California State University, San Bernardino — spoke to attendees at the American Association of Colleges and Universities′ annual conference last week about practical ways they work to improve student outcomes.

Boosting Economic Mobility: Higher Graduation Rates, Higher Wages?

Public Agenda’s economic mobility analysis, released last month, includes every U.S. college that enrolled at least one student in the 2022-23 academic year and awarded at least one undergraduate degree between 2020-21 and 2022-23.

Researchers found that higher completion rates at an institution were associated with stronger earnings outcomes for graduates. As a result, boosting graduation rates “is key” for “fair returns to higher education for all students,” the report said.

For example, a bachelor’s degree-awarding college with a completion rate of 61%, 5 percentage points higher than the national median of 56%, could expect to have graduates with median annual earnings that were an average of $1,283 higher.

“A $1,283 increase in earnings can mean the difference between living paycheck to paycheck or starting to save as a recent graduate,” the report said.

At associate degree-awarding institutions, a jump from the national median completion rate of 35% up to 40% was associated with an average $736 increase in graduates’ median annual earnings.

Those jumps can have an even greater impact on economic mobility when multiplied over decades, the report said.

Read the full article about universities boosting economic mobility by Laura Spitalniak at Higher Ed Dive.