Economic Diversity Regional Universities (West)
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.
These rankings are split into 4 regions: North, South, Midwest, and West.
| Save | School | Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: |
|---|---|---|
|
Southern Utah University
Cedar City, UT |
48% | |
|
Montana State University–Billings
Billings, MT |
48% | |
|
Lubbock Christian University
Lubbock, TX |
47% | |
|
California State University–East Bay
Hayward, CA |
47% | |
|
California State Polytechnic University–Pomona
Pomona, CA |
47% | |
|
Angelo State University
San Angelo, TX |
47% | |
|
University of Texas of the Permian Basin
Odessa, TX |
47% | |
|
West Texas A&M University
Canyon, TX |
47% | |
|
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
Belton, TX |
46% | |
|
La Sierra University
Riverside, CA |
46% |
