The Gift of Access

Last spring Chayda Harding ’22 wrote to me to say that they’re going to graduate school. Chayda and I had met during their first year on campus and kept in touch through the balance of their brilliant undergraduate career, talking about their classes, research projects and internships and their work as a student docent at the Block Museum of Art, a position they loved. After graduating from Northwestern in 2022 — with history department honors, of course — Chayda moved to Boston for a job at the city’s Center for the Arts. In short order, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston lured them to its staff. Then, this summer, Chayda started a master of arts program in museum education at Tufts University — the same institution where, decades ago, their grandmother had worked as a janitor, cleaning the gym. 

In recent years, universities like Northwestern have come under fierce criticism for their elitism. It’s hardly a new accusation. And for far too long, it wasn’t wrong. In 1904, the year Chayda’s great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, only 2.3% of college-aged Americans were attending institutions of higher education, most of them at private colleges that served the well-to-do. When Chayda’s grandmother finished high school in 1947, the share had risen to 14.2%. But that was still too small a slice of the population to make room for Chayda’s grandmother, the 10th child of a shoe factory worker living in a narrow little house in Somerville, Mass., less than a mile from Tufts.  

The expansion of public university systems over the next few decades gradually broadened higher education’s reach. In 1960 roughly 23% of 18- to 24-year-olds were pursuing college degrees; in 1980, 26%; and at the century’s end, 35%. But the earlier era’s inequities hadn’t disappeared. Though inconsistent measurements make it impossible to settle on precise numbers, it’s fair to say that, by the start of the 21st century, higher education had become absolutely standard among the wealthiest 25% of American families — nearly 80% of college-aged students attended. Meanwhile only about a quarter of families whose incomes were low enough to qualify for Pell Grants managed to send their children to college. 

Lower-income students had a particularly hard time enrolling at the most prestigious private schools. In 2007 just 13% of Harvard University’s undergraduates received Pell Grants. At Stanford University the number totaled 12% and at Yale University, 11%. At Northwestern it was 9%, lower than 22 of the University’s 25 peer institutions. 

Then things changed. 

Then-President Morton Schapiro ’23 H announced his “20 by 2020” initiative in March 2016. It was an audacious act to commit a significant portion of the University endowment’s payout to expanding aid for lower-income students and a promise to raise the share of Pell-eligible students in Northwestern’s first-year classes to 20% by 2020. In the end, Northwestern met Schapiro’s goal two years ahead of schedule, when the class of 2022 — Chayda’s class — arrived on campus. (Read more about Schapiro in “The Morty Years.”  

Since then, the share of Pell students on campus has inched up to 21%, a figure that puts Northwestern ahead of all but four of its peer institutions. That’s a remarkable transformation, made possible by the University’s willingness to invest in a more equitable vision of higher education. Chayda benefited, of course. But Northwestern benefited more, by having in our classes a marvelously gifted student who, without the University’s support, couldn’t have attended Northwestern. Now they’re heading to grad school, the grandchild of a janitor, coming into their own. 

Kevin Boyle is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History.