Giving Compass' Take:

• Richard Fry and Anthony Cilluffo report that the increase in undergraduates in the United States over the last two decades has been driven by low-income students and students of color. 

• How can funders work to ensure that these new students have the access and support they need to thrive in college? How can the remaining gaps in participation be closed? 

• Learn about creating equity along the paths to and through college. 

The overall number of undergraduates at U.S. colleges and universities has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, with growth fueled almost exclusively by an influx of students from low-income families and students of color. But these changes are not occurring uniformly across the postsecondary landscape. The rise of poor and minority undergraduates has been most pronounced in public two-year colleges and the least selective four-year colleges and universities, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of National Center for Education Statistics data. There has been less change at the nation’s more selective four-year colleges and universities, where a majority of dependent undergraduates continue to be from middle- and higher-income families.

As of the 2015-16 academic year (the most recent data available), about 20 million students were enrolled in undergraduate education, up from 16.7 million in 1995-96.1 Of those enrolled in 2015-16, 47% were nonwhite and 31% were in poverty, up from 29% and 21%, respectively, 20 years earlier.2

The rising proportion of undergraduates in poverty does not mirror wider trends in society. The official poverty rate for adults age 18 to 64 (12%) was similar in 1996 and 2016, suggesting that access to college for students from lower-income backgrounds has increased since 1996.

The share of students in poverty differs considerably between dependent students – those who are younger than 24 and assumed to be receiving financial support from their family – and independent students, which includes those ages 24 and older as well as younger students assumed to be receiving little or no financial support from their parents. In 2016, 20% of dependent students were in poverty, up from 12% in 1996. Among independent students, fully 42% were in poverty in 2016, compared with 29% 20 years earlier.

Read the full article about undergraduates in the United States by Richard Fry and Anthony Cilluffo at Pew Research Center.