Last summer, Community Advocates published an ” title=”Economix Blog” target=”_blank”>Economix Blog, joins the praise for UCLA. Leonhardt cites the most recent data for elite universities and their paltry Pell Grant student admit percentages—-Harvard 6.5%, Yale 8.9%, University of Pennsylvania 8.2%, Duke and Northwestern 8.3% and Stanford 12%.
These relatively small numbers persist despite a commitment in 2005 from many of these universities to improve the admission of economically disadvantaged students. At the time, Harvard’s then-president, Larry Summers, opined that the growing divide between the children of the rich and the children of the poor was “the most serious domestic problem in the United States today.”
Leonhardt then comes to the conclusion that will warm the hearts of Bruins, recognition of what UCLA (and many of the UC’s as we point out in our op/ed) has done:
To give credit where it’s due, the University of California, Los Angeles, leads all elite colleges with 30.7% of its students receiving Pell Grants.
It is no small matter that elite research universities have expended the extra effort to identify and admit students who have the potential to succeed but not the resources to have yet reached their potential. Once again, much deserved kudos goes to UCLA and its UC colleagues for setting the pace for the rest of America’s best colleges and universities.
