Federal agencies, state governments, and especially institutions of higher education are driving students who are from low-income families or are members of minority groups away from colleges and universities, according to a study released on Thursday that analyzed class mobility and racial matriculation rates in academe. The study concluded not only that such students face greater financial burdens than ever before, but also that those who end up at college are "attending in ways far less likely to lead to a degree."

Higher education has become "simply another agent of stratification," says the report, produced by the Education Trust, a nonprofit research-and-advocacy organization, which did not blame any one group for that outcome. The group noted that federal Pell grants have leveled off in recent years and have not kept up with rising tuition costs, and also that state-government aid to low-income students has increased at smaller rates than aid to middle-class and wealthy students.

But the report, "Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities," also faulted universities and colleges for hindering access to higher education, especially through practices that are often hidden from the public. At a news conference on Thursday, Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust and author of the report, singled out the two-pronged practice of "enrollment management" as especially troublesome.

One prong of enrollment management is "financial-aid leveraging," which, according to the report, includes both the pursuit of high-achieving students who need little monetary support, and a tactic known as "admit-deny": admitting low-income students, but offering them such small financial-aid packages they cannot reasonably attend a given university or college.

The second prong of enrollment management is "tuition discounting," in which colleges offset the cost of attending by awarding institutional aid to selected students.

Traditionally, the report says, colleges have used tuition discounting to "shield" wealthy and middle-class students from rising tuition rates by offering them more and more aid at the expense of needier students. Because wealth correlates with measures such as high test scores, Ms. Haycock said, this practice allows colleges and universities "to purchase high-school talent that will make them look better in various rankings."

While troublesome, Mr. Haycock said, the phenomenon is not surprising, because administrators aren't rewarded for pursuing and educating needier students, but for bringing in high-achieving ones. "You get a lot more bonus points for increasing selectivity," she said.

But representatives for colleges and universities said the report lacks context. "It's easy to say that institutions have walked away, but there are lots of pressures coming to bear on institutions and governing boards," said Melanie E. Corrigan, an associate director for the American Council on Education. "They rightly say there are ways we can restructure policy." But she added that she thought Education Trust was "a little loose" in defining terms. For instance, when determining "merit" awards, Mr. Corrigan said, financial aid offices often include need as one factor.

Ms. Corrigan also used a refrain popular among higher-education administrators -- that low attendance and paltry graduation rates among some groups reflect the poor preparation those students received in high school. And, she said, "the challenges are not just preparation and money." For many needy students, "it's the first time you've ever left your family."

But while the report acknowledges that many high schools are not up to par, it notes that most states have substantially invested in elementary and secondary education in recent years. And Ms. Haycock said the fact that some colleges and universities consistently graduate low-income and minority students proves that it can be done.

Models of Success

In fact, while the report was scathing at some points, it did identify some institutions that showed little or no gap between the graduation rates of student subpopulations. One such institution was the City University of New York's Bernard M. Baruch College, whose provost and vice president for academic affairs, David Dannenbring, also spoke at the news conference on Thursday.

Mr. Dannenbring jokingly said Baruch College is one of the few institutions in the "50/50 club": over half its students are poor enough to receive Pell grants, but over half graduate within six years. He said that Baruch has made concerted efforts not only to reach but retain low-income and minority students by expanding summer offerings to keep them attending year-round, and by offering Saturday and Sunday classes. All the extra classes, he said, "sold out very quickly."

Mr. Dannenbring added that institutions shouldn't focus on finding better-prepared students but on assisting students already in place, for pragmatic reasons if nothing else. "If you only focus on bringing in better-prepared students, it's going to take six years before you see results."

Finally, the report -- which reached as far back as the 1970s for its data but focused largely on changes between 1995 and now -- contained recommendations. Ross Wiener, policy director of the Education Trust, said that, above all, the financial-aid system, for both federal and institutional aid, must be revamped. He even suggested that university presidents' salaries and/or bonuses might be tied to the graduation rates of low-income and minority students.

In addition, he said, "there needs to be a new system of metrics for addressing quality in higher education."

Ms. Corrigan, of the American Council on Education, agreed that "by and large, institutions have been measured by strange incentives, and they respond to those incentives."

In the end, Mr. Wiener said, devoting more money to students who traditionally struggle at college will be to the benefit of everyone. "Its not about charity. It's about allowing those students to contribute to the social and economic well-being of the nation."

Among other findings, the report said that:

△The best students in the lowest-income quartile graduate at nearly the same rate (78 percent) as the worst students in the highest-income quartile (77 percent).

△While the average institutional-aid package for students from families that make less than $20,000 increased by over 50 percent from 1995 to 2003, the average package for students whose families make more than $100,000 increased by more than 250 percent over the same period.

△Certain institutions that attract elite students, like Stanford University, have predictably high graduation rates for students from minority groups and low gaps between the rates for minority and nonminority students. But many small and obscure schools, such as Berea College, Claflin University, and the College of Mount St. Vincent, fare nearly as well.

△One study that tracked eighth-graders who were high achievers in math over a 10-year period found that, for those from high-income families, 99 percent attended college, and 74 percent graduated. Among similarly high-achieving students from low-income families, three-quarters attended college, but only 29 percent graduated.

△A gap has opened in attendance rates for black, Hispanic, and white students since 1974, when recent high-school graduates from those groups were attending college at the same rate (47 percent). Now, the rate for white students is 69 percent, while the rates for black and Hispanic students are 63 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

(The Chronicle of Higher Education)