How Fairfield University Ended Up With Few Low-Income Students

In The News

November 19, 2022

From The New York Times

By Ron Lieber

November 19, 2022

Last night, the first official basketball game at Fairfield University’s brand-new, 85,000-square-foot Leo D. Mahoney Arena took place. The building, which cost $51 million, takes pride of place in the center of campus.

Across Loyola Drive, in the suite of admission and financial aid offices in the Aloysius P. Kelley Center, the school has hit a different kind of milestone: The class of first-year students that entered in 2020 had the lowest percentage of Pell Grant recipients of any college in the United States — 7.5 percent — according to the most recent federal data.

The federal government makes Pell Grants available to students from families with the lowest incomes in the country. So the figure has become a proxy for a higher education institution’s commitment to pulling students up from the lowest rungs of the social-class ladder.

Read the full story here.