21 Mar Finding 4. Pell Students Tend to Be Concentrated at the Schools with the Worst Outcomes
There are significant gaps in outcomes for students who attend top-quartile and bottom-quartile schools.
Using our “mobility metric” outlined above, we mapped how well four-year public schools were delivering for low- and moderate-income students on a variety of metrics, including graduation rates, the percentage of students earning more than $25,000/year, and the percentage of students able to enter into repayment on their loans. By dividing the schools based on their “mobility score” into quartiles, we were able to see the wide gap in quality that exists between public colleges and universities-with top-quartile schools significantly more likely to fulfill the promise of mobility for students than their bottom-quartile peers. Specifically, when looking at the data for completion and repayment:
- There is a 35.7 point difference between the average completion rate at top-quartile schools (66.5%) and the average completion rate at https://paydayloansohio.org/ bottom-quartile schools (30.9%).
- There is a nearly 30 point gap between the average repayment rate at top-quartile schools (90.0%) and bottom-quartile schools (60.7%).
- There is a 20.3 point difference between the proportion of students who make more than a typical high school graduate at top-quartile schools (73.1%) and bottom-quartile schools (52.8%)
Not all public schools are created equal.
Similar gaps in the outcomes between top- and bottom-quartile schools were also evident in our analysis of the four-year private, non-profit peers (for example, there was a 39 point completion gap, a 29 point repayment gap, and a 28 point earnings gap between the top-tier and bottom-tier schools).