Here's the 20 worst 4-yr colleges in the country when it comes to enrolling low-income students.

Source: IPEDS data released today

Here's the 10 worst 4-year schools when it comes to enrolling low-income students over the past 3 years.

Looking for a glimmer of hope, I looked to see if the worst schools in 2018 were on a path to improvement.

Nope. Almost all were worse.

It looks like High Point & Santa Clara's grab for ratings in recent years came at a cost to poor students.

It *is* possible, however, for a college to increase access to low-income students. Look at the bottom 10 in 2011.

Here's how the bottom 10 in 2011 changed between then and 2018. Wash U was repeatedly called out for its dismal Pell numbers & it improved. It's important to keep in mind that the lower the number the easier it is to make a big change in percent growth, but some credit is due.

Because I know it's going to come up, here are the Ivy Plus schools with the exception of Columbia, which continues to report students who are enrolled in the School of General Studies, which likely boosts its Pell numbers.

Kudos to Princeton, which went from 2nd worst to 1st.

Some of our most selective universities (and some of our most selective Catholic universities in particular #WWJD) have a way to go when it comes to increasing access for low-income students. The good news is that it's possible to do so, if an institution *wants* to do so.

I'm going to follow up on this thread with one on the schools that have a real impact on social mobility, but here's a teaser.

The University of Central Florida enrolls 1.5 times as many students with Pell Grants as the 12 Ivy Plus universities combined and also graduates more.

UCF has a 69% Pell grad rate, which is lower than the 90%+ of Ivy+ schools, but that solid grad number combined with the large number of students w/ Pell means that 1 school graduates more students with Pell grants than the Ivys, Stanford, Duke, MIT, and UChicago combined.