Graduation rate, class size, tuition cost, post-graduate employment... these all are traditional measurements most students consider when selecting a college or university.
However, one measurement that is mentioned-- despite its mammoth importance-- is the school's track record with student economic mobility-- in other words, the best chance a low-income student has to become a wealthy adult.
According to a major new report conducted by The Equality of Opportunity Project, students coming from families with low incomes have a great chance of making it big if they attend St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.
A defining feature of the "American Dream" is upward income mobility: the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents.
Our work shows that children's prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90 percent to 50 percent over the past half century. Understanding what has led to this erosion of the American Dream — and how we can revive it for future generations — is the motivation for the Equality of Opportunity Project, the organization wrote in its report.
"Economic mobility is a big part of what college should be about,"said Timothy J. Houlihan, president of St. Francis College. "At St. Francis we offer an excellent private college education at an affordable price.
"The results are students who take advantage of the tools we give them to succeed, opportunities in New York City, and little debt to hold them back."
The Equality of Opportunity Project found that out of almost 600 selective private colleges studies, a student coming from the bottom fifth of incomes at St. Francis had a 49 percent chance to reach the top fifth of incomes as an adult: that's the 19th best chance for upward mobility.
"... For more than 150 years we have been educating people who are the first in their family to attend a college, many of them with economic needs," said Houlihan. "Studies like this show that we are a proven path to success for those who dream of a better tomorrow."
