Best of the Best: Very High Pell, Low Net Price

At 48 public four-year colleges and universities, Pell Grant recipients make up more than 50 percent of their student bodies and the lowest-income pay an average net price under $10,000.

Source: The above data are from the Department of Education. This is only a selection of schools in the category.

These public regional colleges, many of which are located in urban areas, are the true workhorses in providing social mobility to the large numbers of low-income and minority students they enroll. Many of these schools have leaders who believe that colleges should be more inclusive than exclusive in admitting students.

One such leader is Nancy Cantor, who is the chancellor of Rutgers University at Newark, one of the most racially and socioeconomically diverse college campuses in the country. In 2015–16, 53 percent of the students at Rutgers University-Newark received Pell Grants, and the lowest-income, in-state freshmen paid an average net price of $7,796. Black, Hispanic, and Asian students make up almost two-thirds of the student body.¹

Cantor believes that universities should act as “anchor institutions” in the towns and cities in which they reside, working with communities to address what at first glance appear to be intractable problems.²

She took this approach as chancellor of Syracuse University. During her nearly 10-year tenure at Syracuse, from 2004 to 2013, she helped transform the private non-profit university into one of the most socioeconomically diverse private universities of its caliber. And she forged connections with the city of Syracuse—by sending student tutors into local schools, for example, and providing full-tuition scholarships to graduates of those schools who qualified for admission to Syracuse.³

Some faculty members at Syracuse did not appreciate Cantor’s efforts to diversify the campus and revitalize the city. They panicked when the university saw its ranking drop in U.S. News & World Report, and accused her of allowing academic standards at Syracuse to slide, although there was little evidence to suggest these accusations were true.⁴

Cantor believes that universities should act as “anchor institutions” in the towns and cities in which they reside, working with communities to address what at first glance appear to be intractable problems

When Cantor saw the opportunity to take the chancellorship at Rutgers’ Newark branch, she jumped at it. “It’s really a good fit with the things that I believe in, in terms of the role of higher education in serving the public good,” she told The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s student newspaper, in 2013.⁵

It wasn’t always so at Rutgers’ Newark campus, which was established in 1946. For much of its early history, the university enrolled students who were overwhelmingly white even though the institution was located in a predominantly black city. As of 1969, minority students made up less than 5 percent of the student body.⁶ That year, a group of black students seized an academic building called Conklin Hall and held it for three days, demanding that the university make greater efforts to recruit black students and faculty members. Today university administrators, professors, and students celebrate the takeover of Conklin Hall as a transformational event in the university’s history. Still, progress on diversifying the institution was slow and halting and took decades.⁷

By the late 1990s, U.S. News declared Rutgers-Newark to be the most racially diverse national university in the country.⁸ But for years, graduation rates for black students significantly lagged those for white students.⁹ In 2002, after key leadership changes at both the Newark campus and the Rutgers University system, the school’s administrators took the problem head-on and by 2011 had narrowed the gap to just a 1 percentage point difference.¹⁰

When Cantor took charge of the university in 2014, she set out to significantly increase the enrollment of Newark residents, make the school more affordable for low-income students, and actively engage these students in efforts to revitalize the city, state, and country.¹¹

Under her leadership, the university made the school tuition-free for Newark students who gain admission and come from families making $60,000 or less. These Talent and Opportunity Pathways (TOP) scholarships are also available to other low-income students who are admitted after earning an associate degree from a community college in New Jersey.¹²

In addition, the university created the Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC), a new honors college that focuses on developing the leadership skills of local students.¹³ Students admitted to the HLLC receive scholarships covering their housing costs and meal plans. The program is extremely competitive. For the first class in 2015-16, the university chose 60 students out of 740 who applied. Of this group, three-quarters were from Newark and 80 percent were members of minority groups.¹⁴

Cantor’s single-mindedness on increasing opportunities for Newark students has paid off, as their enrollment has grown by nearly 60 percent since her arrival, according to university officials.¹⁵

“We are saying to the young people of the city of Newark and our great state: We see your talent. We honor your talent,” Cantor said when unveiling the TOP scholarship program. “We want you to learn with us—and we want to learn from you—and together with our communities of experts across Newark, the state, the nation, and the world, we are going to make a difference.”