Economic Diversity

National Universities

Economic diversity has received growing attention in higher education, particularly at elite schools that haven't traditionally enrolled large numbers of students from low-income families. This table shows the percentage of undergraduates receiving federal Pell Grants for low-income students.

The proportion of students receiving Pell Grants, which are most often given to undergrads with family incomes of less than $20,000, isn't a perfect measure of an institution's efforts to achieve economic diversity: A college might enroll a large number of students just above the Pell cutoff, for instance, and percentages at public universities may reflect the wide variation from state to state in the number of qualified low-income students.

Still, many experts say that Pell figures are the best available gauge of how many low-income undergrads there are on a given campus. Pell Grant percentages were calculated using 2013-2014 data on the number of Pell Grant recipients at each school collected by the U.S. Department of Education and given to U.S. News, along with fall 2013 total undergraduate enrollment collected from the colleges themselves by U.S. News.

School Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants
New Mexico State University 

Las Cruces, NM

90%
Texas A&M University—​Kingsville 

Kingsville, TX

86%
Clark Atlanta University 

Atlanta, GA

80%
South Carolina State University 

Orangeburg, SC

78%
Texas Southern University 

Houston, TX

76%
Tennessee State University 

Nashville, TN

72%
Kent State University 

Kent, OH

70%
Florida A&M University 

Tallahassee, FL

67%
National Louis University 1

Chicago, IL

66%
University of New Mexico 

Albuquerque, NM

66%
Arizona State University—​Tempe 

Tempe, AZ

65%
North Carolina A&T State University 

Greensboro, NC

65%
Morgan State University 

Baltimore, MD

62%
Our Lady of the Lake University 

San Antonio, TX

62%
Trinity International University 

Deerfield, IL

61%
University of California—​Riverside 

Riverside, CA

60%
Georgia State University 

Atlanta, GA

59%
Benedictine University 

Lisle, IL

58%
Barry University 

Miami Shores, FL

57%
Texas A&M University—​Commerce 

Commerce, TX

56%
Florida International University 

Miami, FL

55%
Pennsylvania State University—​University Park 

University Park, PA

55%
Bowie State University 

Bowie, MD

54%
University of Illinois—​Chicago 

Chicago, IL

54%
University of South Florida 

Tampa, FL

54%

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