Regional public universities form the backbone of the American higher education system, with 40% of all undergraduate students enrolled in one. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests that they play a vital role in improving economic and social mobility in their respective regions by broadening access to higher education for local residents.
Many of the students that go to public universities are from lower-income families, and the researchers show that they not only increase college attainment of the people in their county, but they also increase high school graduation rates and improve various other metrics associated with economic and social wellbeing, such as household income and employment.
“Regional public universities have positive effects on local economic and social mobility,” the researchers explain. “For people who grow up around a regional public university, we found a host of positive knock-on effects, especially for children from lower-income families.”
Increasing access
The researchers explain that a key part of the mission of regional public universities is to increase access to higher education. They do this by locating near to large pools of potential students and both charge lower tuition fees and require lower entry requirements to enrol. They can do this by relying more heavily on state funding that private schools.
“When legislators are thinking about allocating funding for regional public universities, it’s important for them to know just how many benefits they provide to students in the surrounding community,” the authors explain.
They compared the historical assignment of what were once called “normal schools”, ie schools that were established by the state government to educate elementary school teachers, with the placement of state-funded mental asylums as well as other data in order to pinpoint the effects of regional universities on the social mobility of nearby children.
These normal schools usually evolved into regional universities, whereas state-funded mental asylums were turned into psychiatric hospitals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the children from normal-school counties typically received more education and achieved better social and economic outcomes than children from counties with state-funded asylums. This impact was greatest for those children from lower-income families.
“For example, children whose parental income was at the 25th percentile—regional public universities raised the fraction of those children with a four-year college degree by more than 8%,” the authors explain. “In addition, regional public universities improved the fraction of children in the county who are employed in their mid-30s as well as their income percentiles, with effects concentrated among children from lower-income families.”
Improving prospects
The researchers believe this is almost certainly due to the ability of the universities to improve the fortune of existing residents rather than attracting immigration into the region.
The study also highlights the key role public funding for rational universities can play and reminds us that geographic frictions play a huge role in both economic mobility and college attendance.
“We’re identifying an effect on people who grew up in these counties relative to people who grew up in the same state but weren’t near a regional public university,” the authors conclude. “One of the policy questions raised by this research is whether students outside of the immediate geographic boundaries of the regional public universities would benefit from more outreach.”
