According to the Social Mobility Index (SMI), when it comes to providing opportunities for underserved students, the wealthiest schools are not necessarily doing the best job. The SMI, a partnership of CollegeNET and PayScale, Inc., ranks US colleges and universities according to the number of lower-income students they help to enroll, graduate, and obtain well-paying jobs.
See where schools stand on the SMI at socialmobilityindex.org
The SMI ranks schools according to five variables:
Published tuition
Endowment
Percentage of student body from families below the US median income
Graduation rate of low-income students
Reported salary after graduation for low-income students
According to Lydia Frank, Editorial Director at PayScale, “The SMI rankings clearly show that colleges and universities can be part of improving both economic opportunity and social stability in our country. “A school can most dramatically move itself upward in the SMI rankings by lowering its tuition or increasing its percentage of economically disadvantaged students – or both.”
Read the SMI story in Campus Technology
