Since 1990, nearly 80 percent of high-school completers from high-income families (the top 20 percent of income) have enrolled in college the next fall. The proportion of those from low-income families who enroll in college the following fall has been moving up gradually, but it remains much lower – just over 50 percent.
6 This discrepancy holds even for students classified as high achievers: A longitudinal study of eighth graders in 1988 found that only 29 percent of those scoring in the top fourth of the group in math – but who were from families with low social and economic status – had completed a bachelor’s degree or more by 2000, while three-fourths of those from families with high social and economic status finished their undergraduate degrees (Fox, Connelly, and Snyder, 2005).