Poor Historiography: The "Poorest" in American Higher Education

Abstract

In 1947, the President's Commission on Higher Education issued the so-called “Truman Report” which identified five significant deterrents to completing a college degree: race, gender, religion, geography, and socioeconomic background. Over fifty years later, religious affiliation, geographic origins, and gender are no longer significant barriers to degree attainment. In fact, by 1991 women comprised a majority of America's undergraduates. At the time of the Truman Report, “race” referred generally to African Americans. Although no one would argue that African-American students (as well as other disadvantaged students of color) are attending, persisting, and graduating from colleges in the numbers deemed desirable, these students are better represented now than they were at the conclusion of World War II. In 1940, for example, African Americans with a college degree represented approximately two percent of the black population, while college-educated whites comprised over seven percent of white adults. By 1995 the gap had widened to 26 percent of white adults but only 15 percent of African Americans. The Truman Report considered a family poor if it had a cash income of less than $2,350 per annum—approximately 20 percent of all United States families. It cited research showing that when student ability (as measured by standard IQ tests) was held constant, boys from the higher income group were four times more likely to attend college than boys from the lowest stratum. By the early 1990s, students from the highest income quartile were ten times more likely to earn a college degree than those from the lowest quartile. Therefore, the only group identified by the Truman Report whose odds of attending college are actually worse today is the poor, regardless of racial background. When the persistent and pernicious interrelationship of poverty and minority status within the United States is acknowledged, socioeconomic background emerges as perhaps the most salient determinate of college attendance.