In what it calls the first of a series of reports on higher education in Pennsylvania, the Keystone Research Center says about six out of ten “mobility success stories” come from State System of Higher Education universities. The “mobility rate” is defined as a student coming from the bottom sixty percent of the income scale moving into the top forty percent of earners as adults in their early thirties.
Cheyney University students lead the way, with a 29 percent mobility rate. IUP is sixth, with a rate of 24 percent, after Mansfield, California, Lock Haven, and Slippery Rock. The bottom three of the fourteen schools are Millersville, Kutztown, and West Chester.
47 percent of IUP’s students since 1999 have come from families in the bottom 60 percent of income. 51 percent of those students rose to the top 40 percent of earners.
The report titled “Pennsylvania’s Great Working-Class Colleges” warns that rising tuition rates are threatening the ability of students to grow into a higher income bracket. Thirty-five percent of the class of 2013 came from the bottom sixty percent of the income range, down from 41 percent in the class of 2002, (students who entered college in 1999, the first year included in the study).
The research group recommends higher taxes on the top 20 percent of income earners – those making $104,000 or more – which it says could raise at least 88 percent of $2 billion to be dedicated to higher education and “other state priorities”. The remaining twelve percent would presumably come from lower-income families.
