College for All, Degrees for Few:For-Profit Colleges and Socioeconomic Differences in Degree Attainmen

• In Event: 416 - Regular Session. Sociology of Higher Education II - "Legitimate" Institutional Expansion, Transformation, and Stratification

Abstract

The recent expansion of for-profit colleges has opened up additional slots in higher education, but it remains unclear whether these additional slots mitigate or exacerbate the effect of social background on educational attainment. This paper fills this gap by systematically examining the effect of for-profit colleges on socioeconomic disparities in access to, and attainment of, postsecondary degrees. Results from a logit models and weighted regression on a large nationally representative sample of students who graduated high school in 2004 suggest that for-profit colleges may decrease inequality in access to higher education, but they enhance socioeconomic segregation in higher education and inequality in bachelor’s degree attainment. Students from the bottom SES quartile are more likely to enter for-profit colleges than other institutions. Yet, for-profit colleges have a unique negative effect on the likelihood of these students to earn a bachelor’s degree relative to other institutions, including community colleges. No similar effect is found on the likelihood of students from the top SES quartile to earn a bachelor’s degree. Given the price of tuition at for-profit colleges, these results suggest that for-profit colleges are contributing to a growing type of inequality—one in which those with the most limited resources are least likely to reap the benefits of their investment in education. I discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these results.

Authors

• Dafna Gelbgiser, Cornell University

• Kim Weeden, Cornell University