Minority Serving Institutions as Engines of Upward Mobility

Minority serving institutions (MSIs) play an integral role in the education of students from low-income families and communities of color where educational attainment is disproportionately low and income mobility can be stagnant. With a commitment to serve the nation and their surrounding communities, MSIs are engines of upward mobility for millions of students, and play this role even while the majority of MSIs are at a financial resources disadvantage when compared to non-MSIs. A new brief, Minority Serving Institutions as Engines of Upward Mobility, from the American Council on Education looks at newly released Equality of Opportunity Project data to examine the upward income mobility of students who attended MSIs compared to students who did not. Overall, they found that MSIs propel their students from the bottom to the top of the income distribution at higher rates than do nonMSIs.