No solvency—as few as 1% graduation rate for Pell Grant students at universities

In front of the iconic Old Manse, the oldest building in Arkansas constructed solely for the purpose of educating black students, there’s a plaque recounting the rich and poignant history of Arkansas Baptist College. Founded in 1884 to serve former slaves, the college is in Little Rock’s Central High historic district, named for the nearby public school that was forcibly integrated by federal troops and made famous by the iconic photo of jeering whites hurling vitriol at black children. “Growing Hope,” read the banners hanging from the metal fence encircling the campus. Arkansas Baptist is still predominantly black. Most of its students come from families with low incomes, as measured by the number who are eligible to receive federal Pell Grants, designed to help low-income students nationwide earn degrees. In 2011, federal figures show, 201 of its incoming freshmen got Pell Grants, representing some of the the Congressional Budget Office estimates the government has paid out through that program in the last decade. But new federal data show that, six years later, none of those students at Arkansas Baptist had graduated. Nor had any other freshmen who received Pell Grants in 2011 to attend 48 other colleges and universities, including taxpayer-subsidized public institutions. At other schools, as few as one in 100 Pell Grant recipients had earned a degree within six years. In all, of U.S. students at four-year universities and colleges who got Pell Grants in 2011 graduated within six years, by Seton Hall University assistant professor of education Robert Kelchen shows. That compares to . The proportion of Pell recipients who earned degrees within six years was lowest at for-profit institutions: 20 percent, . Pell recipients fared best at private, nonprofit campuses. There, 55 percent of Pell recipients graduated. The figures provide the first-ever look at the return on taxpayers’ investment in the Pell Grant, the largest single federal financial aid program; this information was never before collectively available, and while individual colleges were required to disclose it if asked, . About 7.5 million students are projected to get Pell Grants this coming academic year, . The generally low success rate reflects the special challenges that face low-income college students. It also shows the impact of their concentration in the institutions least equipped to help them succeed. Meanwhile, wealthier students predominate at elite private and public flagship universities that have significantly more resources. “There is some threshold at which there are things that colleges don’t have control over and can’t be accountable for, but if you are consistently leaving more students worse off than when they came to you, that doesn’t seem like a worthwhile investment,” said Jessica Thompson, policy and research director at the advocacy group The Institute for College Access and Success, or TICAS