Colleges That Are Successful in Graduating Low-Income Students

In an effort to level the playing field for African Americans seeking higher education, the importance of the federal Pell Grant program cannot be overemphasized. This federal grant program for low-income students is the life-blood for hundreds of thousands of African Americans seeking higher education. Without this important program, many black students would not be able to enroll in higher education. Hundreds of thousands of other blacks would have to go deeper into debt or hold down a job while attending college if it were not for the Pell Grant program.

Since 1976 federal Pell Grants, named after Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell who championed the cause of making college more affordable, have provided money for tens of millions of low-income students. Pell Grants are awarded to undergraduate college students by the federal government based upon calculations of family size, income, and assets that could be used to finance education as well as projected tuition costs. Close to one half of all African-American undergraduate students receive federal Pell Grant awards.

But enrolling Pell Grant students is one thing. Retaining and graduating them is another. U.S. News and World Report recently published a ranking of the colleges and universities that graduate their Pell Grant students at a higher rate than for their overall student bodies.

At the top of the list is Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. At FAU, 71 percent of the Pell Grant students entering college in 2005 went on to earn their degree within six years. The overall graduation rate for 2005 entering students at FAU was 43 percent.

Earlham College in Indiana, Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, all had a graduation rate that was at least 15 percentage points higher for Pell Grant students than it was for their student body as a whole.

New College in Sarasota, Florida, the University of San Francisco, and Wartburg College in Iowa all had graduation rates for Pell Grant students that were 7 or more percentage points higher than students generally.

Related Articles

1 COMMENT

  1. Interesting article, as a doctoral student I recently completed a semester where I focused on the ability of HBCUs to increase educational access while maintaining academic standard; I wonder where HBCUs i.e. Howard, Hampton etc rank on this list.

    Ralston O’Connor

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

HBCUs Receive Major Funding From Blue Meridian Partners

The HBCU Transformation Project is a collaboration between the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), and Partnership for Education Advancement. Forty HBCUs are currently working with the project and additional campuses are expected to join this year. The partnership recently received a $124 million investment from Blue Meridian Partners.

Four African American Scholars Who Are Taking on New Duties

Channon Miller is a new assistant professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and Quienton L. Nichols is the new associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. M. D. Lovett has joined Clark Atlanta University as an associate professor of psychology and associate professor Robyn Autry was named director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

U.S. News and World Report’s Latest Rankings of the Nation’s Top HBCUs

Spelman College in Atlanta was ranked as the best HBCU and Howard University in Washington, D.C., was second. This was the same as a year ago. This was the 17th year in a row that Spelman College has topped the U.S. News rankings for HBCUs.

University of Georgia’s J. Marshall Shepherd Honored by the Environmental Law Institute

Dr. Shepherd is a professor of geography, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor, and the director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia. Before joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, he was a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. Shepherd is an expert in the fields of weather, climate, and remote sensing.

Featured Jobs