A new study shows that for kids who are growing up poor, a bachelor's degree is getting further out of reach.
Conducted by two higher-education research institutes and released this week, the study shows that the college-education gap between rich and poor has multiplied dramatically over the past four decades to perhaps the widest it's been in national history.
The rate of affluent people completing college has exploded, while the rate of low-income people getting diplomas stayed relatively flat, according to the study. In 1970, 40% of affluent students finished college by 24, compared with about 6% of low-income students. In 2013, according to the study, more than three-quarters of upper-income students had finished college by age 24, but less than 10% of poor students did by the same age.
