By ERIC JOHNSON

NEW YORK – For the second year, UNC Chapel Hill has been named one of the best universities in the country for serving an economically diverse group of students.

The New York Times released the second annual College Access Index last week, highlighting schools that do the best job of recruiting and successfully graduating low-income students. UNC was rated 16th in the nation, in the company of the country’s best public and private schools.

In unveiling the index, Times economics reporter David Leonhardt heavily emphasized the role of high-performing public universities in creating economic growth.  While top-tier private institutions figure prominently on the College Access Index, Leonhardt noted that only public institutions have the scale and mission to help large numbers of students achieve a college degree.

Serving those students well, Leonhardt said, will play a huge role in bolstering economic opportunity for the country as a whole.  He noted that the unemployment rate for college graduates between 25 and 34 years old is just 2 percent, compared with more than 8 percent for those with only a high school diploma.

“Clearly the hot political topic of the moment is upward mobility,” Leonhardt said. “This big educational divide is part of the reason the economic ladder has become so hard to climb.”

(Watch David Leonhardt’s full remarks here.)

While many of the country’s best private colleges and universities have taken steps to admit more low-income students, only public universities have the capacity to help more students climb that economic ladder.  Seventy-three percent of all college students in the United States will attend a public institution,[1] and improving outcomes for those students — as UNC Chapel Hill has done, with an overall graduation rate nearing 90 percent — will be crucial.

That is especially true given the country’s shifting demographics.  The next generation of college students will be more diverse — in race, economic status, and family background — than ever before.  That presents huge challenges for public institutions, and an opportunity for those campuses that can effectively serve a broad cohort of students.

This uniquely American economic engine is under threat, Leonhardt noted, from declining state support.

“You see this in California, you see it in North Carolina — governments are pulling back,” Leonhardt said. “They’ve pulled back from education.”

That worry was echoed by University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, who emphasized that private schools like his can only do so much to help raise the nation’s college attainment rate.  Underinvesting in public education, he said, presents a problem for the country’s economic future.

“If you look at the real support from state legislatures to the public [universities] over the last 10, 15 years, it’s down on average by something like 30 percent,” he said. “It creates a huge stress on these systems.”

(See remarks from Zimmer and other higher education leaders from the New York Times conference here.)

Eric Johnson is Assistant Director for Policy Analysis & Communications in the Office of Scholarships & Student Aid at UNC Chapel Hill.  The views he expresses here are his own.