Economic diversity has received growing attention in higher education,
particularly at elite schools that haven't traditionally enrolled large
numbers of low-income students or students from low-income families.
This table shows the percentage of undergraduates receiving federal Pell
grants for low-income students.
The proportion of students on Pell grants, which are most often given to
undergrads with family incomes under $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 2010-2011 school year 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 and fall
2010 total undergraduate enrollment collected from the colleges
themselves by U.S. News.
