Knowledge Bank

Students from the top income quartile are more likely to attend college than their peers in the bottom income quartile. Much current literature blames this college-attendance gap on variations in high school quality, while an alternative view posits that schools are not the source of the gap and might even help to reduce it. I analyzed nearly 9,000 9th graders using data collected in the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) to test whether socioeconomic gaps in support for going to college are greater among non-school actors (e.g., parents) than school actors (e.g., high school counselors and teachers). I find that youth of low socioeconomic status receive less support from home actors, but roughly equal support from school actors compared to youth of high socioeconomic status. The results are consistent with the view that, with respect to support for going to college, schools serve to equalize youths' opportunities. The results of this research imply that schools play a substantially more positive role in the stratification system than most education scholars have assumed, and to reduce the college attendance gap, scholars might focus on reducing the inequality that students experience outside of school.