Susan M. Dynarski spoke to Inside Higher Ed about her research on the widening gap between the college entry and completion rates of the rich and poor. The data Dynarski and co-author Martha Bailey used from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth also revealed an interesting gap between men and women.
"It was surprising to us to find the female advantage is the largest among the highest quartile," Dynarski told Inside Higher Ed. "When you hear about 'the boy problem,' you tend to hear about low-income groups."
"When you look at income inequality, people tend to look at explanations like tuition and those price barriers, or at school quality that reaches across rich and poor districts," Dynarski explained. "But when you look at sex differences, girls and boys are distributed across rich and poor school districts and you have to start looking at a different set of explanations," she told Inside Higher Ed.