Report: 'Workhorse' colleges should consider risk-sharing

Public comprehensive universities — operating in a niche between the largest and most selective flagship institutions and community colleges — are an overlooked "workhorse" in higher education, enrolling around 70% of all four-year undergraduates and providing considerable upward mobility, according to a new report from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.Written by Jorge Klor de Alva, formerly president of the University of Phoenix, the report examines the institutions' role in improving their students' economic prospects. Looking at 272 of the some 430 schools in the category, it found more than half of students starting in the two lowest-income quintiles reached the two highest by their 30s, and more than half moved up at least one quintile or stayed in the top level. An institution's graduation rate played a stronger role in that upward mobility than did its demographics or a lack of selectivity, the report found. Klor de Alva suggests these colleges should do more to increase those rates and recommends risk-sharing as one approach.