Where There Is No Equity Engine: Low-Income Students and the Unequal Geography of College Success

• In Event: Spatial Justice and Educational Geographies of (In)Opportunity

Abstract

Purpose and Framework
American colleges and universities make great promises of mobility but consistently fail to deliver on them, leaving thousands of low-income and first-generation students in debt and without a degree. A small, understudied group of universities I term “Equity Engines” defy this broad of failure. These universities admit large proportions of low-income students and graduate them at rates significantly above the national average. Attending one of these universities dramatically improves the likelihood of attaining a bachelor’s degree and achieving social and economic mobility (Chetty et al., 2017). However, like many social resources, they are unevenly distributed across the country.

As Hillman (2016) illustrates, place matters greatly in determining college access and enrollment. In 2016, students attending a public four-year college traveled a median distance of 18 miles between home and college, and those attending private institutions, 43 miles (Hillman, 2017). Geography matters even more for low-income students. Proximity to home reduces transportation and housing costs and yields in-state tuition discounts and access to in-state financial aid programs. I apply a critical geospatial lens to examine how the unequal geographic distribution of Equity Engines across the United States exacerbates spatial injustice (Soja, 2010) for low-income and first-generation college-going students in particular states and counties.

Methods
I define Equity Engines as institutions that meet thresholds in size (serve ³ 1,000 undergraduates), access (³ 30% undergraduates receive Pell grants), and success (³ 55% Pell students graduate in 6 years). I first used 19-20 IPEDS data to identify all Equity Engines in the United States (n=165). I then calculated the proportion of Pell students served by Equity Engines within the state compared to total Pell students in the state to analyze their accessibility. Finally, to examine the intersection of need and accessibility, I combine 2020 Census data with IPEDS data to map Equity Engines across a heat map of poverty in the United States at the county level. I then create two bivariate choropleth maps that show the relationship between child poverty rates and density of Equity Engines by state and county.

Results and Significance
These analyses reveal concerning patterns between poverty, state boundaries, and access to an Equity Engine. First, 19 states have no Equity Engine within their boundaries. Four of these states have child poverty rates above 20%; 26% of children in Mississippi are living in poverty but have no accessible in-state institution with a track record of effectively serving them. Given that 78.5% of first-time undergraduate students in Mississippi attend college within the state (NCES 2019), this is deeply concerning. Further, within states with Equity Engines, these colleges and universities are not located in counties with the highest child poverty rates. For example, no Equity Engines are in the Rio Grande Valley, and none of Texas’s Equity Engines are in counties with a child poverty rate that exceeds 20%. By examining the intersection of space, poverty, and college success, this paper provides new evidence about how spatial inequalities thwart college completion and where interventions are most urgently needed.

Author

• Becca Spindel Bassett, University of Arkansas