Private, non-profit colleges enroll 3.4 million full-time equivalent students, or 30 per cent of all US students attending four-year institutions. But they receive comparatively little attention relative to public colleges and the for-profit sector, perhaps because the conventional wisdom casts private colleges based on the profile of the most elite institutions in the sector, which have large endowments and charge high tuition to mostly wealthy students. This report provides new descriptive information on private, non-profit colleges.
Key findings include: private colleges are n... Show more
Private, non-profit colleges enroll 3.4 million full-time equivalent students, or 30 per cent of all US students attending four-year institutions. But they receive comparatively little attention relative to public colleges and the for-profit sector, perhaps because the conventional wisdom casts private colleges based on the profile of the most elite institutions in the sector, which have large endowments and charge high tuition to mostly wealthy students. This report provides new descriptive information on private, non-profit colleges.
Key findings include: private colleges are not much more selective than public colleges, on average, and both sectors vary widely in terms of selectivity; the relative enrollment of private and public colleges varies widely across states, from a high of more than 60 per cent in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to less than 5 per cent in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming; private colleges serve a similar proportion of low-income students as public colleges, and low-income students have higher economic mobility rates at private colleges (although this may be due to their greater selectivity).
The fact that the private, non-profit sector is already integrated into the broader higher education system, through federal aid and some state aid programs, suggests that these policy levers might be used to better leverage the private sector to further policymakers' goals, such as increasing educational attainment overall and for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In particular, state policymakers need to consider the role of the private sector when deciding the right balance between direct funding of public institutions and vouchers that students can use at any institution (in the state or more broadly). These debates also intersect with increased interest among federal policymakers in moving away from the federal government's historical focus on providing aid through students (e.g. the Pell grant program and subsidized loans) to providing aid to institutions (through free college proposals). Most students will continue to attend public colleges for the foreseeable future, but the private, non-profit sector plays an important role and may be in a position to contribute even more to the nation's educational attainment and economic mobility than it currently does.
Published executive summary.
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