LONDON — While it may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it has long been thought easier for the rich man’s son or daughter to get into Harvard. Or Oxford.
But thanks to a new study by John Jerrim at the Institute of Education at the University of London we now know how much easier. At a time when governments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are increasingly facing questions about the widening gap between rich and poor, Dr. Jerrim studied access to high-status universities in Britain, the United States and Australia.
“My background is economics, and if you look at the economics, kids that go to certain universities earn a premium on their wages during their working lives over and above the premium you get just by going to college,” Dr. Jerrim said. In the United States that premium is about 6 percent, he said.
“The other reason for looking at these particular universities is that they seem to influence access to certain jobs and to act as a signal to high-flying graduate recruiters,” he said. “If you take the job of being prime minister of Britain, for example, you almost have to have gone to Oxford.”
Dr. Jerrim found that students whose parents come from a professional or managerial background are three times as likely to enter a high status university in Britain or Australia as students with working class parents. For the sake of the study a “high status” university in Britain was defined by membership in the Russell Group of large research institutions; in Australia the study looked at students attending the “Group of Eight” coalition of leading universities.
The same threefold advantage applied to students attending prestigious public universities in the United States — those described as “highly selective” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which rates schools based on the test scores of incoming students. At elite private American universities, moreover, students are six times as likely to come from a professional as a poor or working class background, Dr. Jerrim found.
Social background has long been known to be highly correlated with academic achievement. Especially in the United States, where public schools are partly funded by local property taxes, students who attend schools in richer neighborhoods often outperform their peers from more disadvantaged areas. In Britain, too, both Oxford and Cambridge have long pointed to a dearth of students from poorer backgrounds who achieve the standard required in exams at the end of high school to be considered for admission to most courses at those universities. In 2008, among students whose family incomes were low enough to make them eligible for government-subsidized free school meals, only 232 students in the whole country received the exam grades needed to put them in contention for “Oxbridge” places.
Yet that seems to be only part of the story: Dr. Jerrim said he was surprised to discover a considerable gap in access to selective colleges and universities even after accounting for differences in academic performance as measured by grades or standardized tests.
“We looked at things like SAT scores and grade point average for American students, and G.C.S.E. and PISA scores in Britain,” he said. In Britain, students currently take G.C.S.E.s — national written examinations — between the ages of 15 and 16. The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, exams are standardized tests in math, science and reading administered to 15-year-olds by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D.
“When you take academic achievement into account you can explain some of the difference, but not all of it,” said Dr. Jerrim. In Australia, factors related to academic achievement explained about half the difference in access to the country’s elite universities; in Britain academic factors explained 73 percent of the difference. In American public universities 60 percent of the access gap between students from wealthy and disadvantaged backgrounds could be explained by academic factors, while in elite private American universities only 48 percent could be accounted for by differences in academic achievement.
What this means is that there are significant numbers of working class children who, even though they have the academic credentials to be admitted to elite colleges, are either not being admitted or choosing not to apply,” he said.
Dr. Jerrim’s report was published by the Sutton Trust, a British educational charity that focuses on social mobility.
“What John has shown is that if you look at academic achievement, there should be far more kids from lower income backgrounds going to top universities,” Sir Peter Lampl, the organization’s chairman, said in a telephone interview. “Here in Britain there should be another 3,000 going. And the main reason they aren’t is that they just don’t apply.”
According to Mr. Lampl, “working class kids feel the admissions procedures are rigged against them.”
While many British universities rely solely on test scores and grades, both Oxford and Cambridge interview candidates, and the interviews are often rigorous — a form of oral examination.
“At private schools they practice endlessly for these things. Students at state schools haven’t had that preparation — and in many cases they just don’t want to put themselves through it,” Mr. Lampl said, adding that such students “also worry that even if they do get in they won’t fit in.”
Asked about the policy implications of his research, Dr. Jerrim called for a twin-track approach.
“The main focus for governments should be on improving achievement for poorer students,” he said. “But the fact that there is still this gap suggests that there are also measures schools and universities can take, such as identifying qualified students and encouraging them to raise their aspirations, and using contextual information to give students from disadvantaged backgrounds a fair chance.”
His emphasis on improving schools was echoed by Andreas Schleicher, the O.E.C.D.’s deputy director of education. Noting that the latest PISA results will be released on Dec. 3, Dr. Schleicher said: “There is no question that, in many countries, children from privileged backgrounds have a much greater chance to enter prestigious universities.”
“But our data also show that in those countries, success in school is closely related to the social background of students,” he added. “One of the most interesting findings from PISA is that with the right mix of high expectations and individualized support, students from all social backgrounds can do well.”
Mr. Lampl called on British universities to end their current system of pre-qualification admissions, under which the universities offer conditional places to students before they do their final exams, basing the offer on their predicted, rather than their actual, final grades. “I think the whole system stinks,” he said.
Until the admissions system is reformed, he added, “I think more kids from Britain should be thinking about studying in the U.S.”
The final section of Dr. Jerrim’s report contrasted the “sticker price” of attending Harvard, Oxford, the London School of Economics (L.S.E.), the University of Michigan and the University of Melbourne, with the real net cost of attending each school based on different levels of parental income.
At $52,652 for tuition, room and board, Harvard has the highest sticker price, with Melbourne, at about $38,500, a distant second.
But for students from low-income backgrounds Harvard is by far the cheapest. A British student whose family income is below 10,000 pounds a year, or $16,300 — the cutoff for free school meals — would be expected to pay £3,550 a year to attend Oxford, but only £865 to go to Harvard.
In sterling terms, a student whose family income is £27,500 would pay £13,200 to attend the L.S.E., £11,300 to go to Oxford and the equivalent of about £2,000 at Harvard, less than the £4,700 that Dr. Jerrim estimated for in-state students from a similar background at the University of Michigan.
“The generous aid available even to international students should make U.S. universities an extremely attractive option,” Mr. Lampl said.
