Ideally, college presidents should be leaders, not just for their own institution, but for society at large. At least one college president, Anthony Marx who is now leaving Amherst College, has fulfilled that role by opening the doors of his institution to applicants of modest means as documented in the NYTimes:
Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite By David Leonhardt .
Amherst under Marx is, unfortunately, the exception as most elite colleges and Universities fill their student body with the sons and daughters of the wealthy and the upper middle-class.
Recent numbers are provided in a March 27, 2011 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Elite Colleges Fail to Gain More Students on Pell Grants . The Chronicle found that "just under 15 percent of the undergraduates at the country's 50 wealthiest colleges received Pell Grants in 2008-9, the most recent year for which national data are available. That percentage hasn't changed much from 2004-5, around the time that elite institutions focused their attention on the issue. And Pell Grant students are still significantly less represented at the wealthiest colleges than they are at public and nonprofit four-year colleges nationwide, where grant recipients accounted for roughly 26 percent of students in 2008-9. Individual colleges among the wealthiest have made gains in enrolling Pell Grant students, who generally come from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000. But others have lost ground."
Where does that leave public colleges? Some public Universities are among the elite - University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Texas at Austin - but most public Universities are decidedly not. Public colleges need to strive to hold down costs and attract a student body that mirrors the economic profile of their state. This is a tall order as the publics face increased pressure from state budget cuts.
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