Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Aug;49(8):1151-1165.
doi: 10.1177/01461672221083766. Epub 2022 Apr 27.

Perceived and Ideal Inequality in University Endowments in the United States

Martin V Day  1 , Michael I Norton  2
Affiliations

Perceived and Ideal Inequality in University Endowments in the United States

Martin V Day et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

Whether and which university to attend are among the most financially consequential choices most people make. Universities with relatively larger endowments can offer better education experiences, which can drive inequality in students' subsequent outcomes. We first explore three interrelated questions: the current educational inequality across U.S. universities, people's perceptions of this inequality, and their desired inequality. Educational inequality is large: the top 20% of universities have 80% of the total university endowment wealth while the bottom 20% have around 1%. Studies 1 to 3 demonstrated that people underestimate university endowment inequality and desire more equality. These perceptions and ideals were mostly unaffected by contextual factors (e.g., salience of endowment consequences, distribution range) and were not well explained by participants' demographics. Finally, Study 4 revealed that learning about current endowment inequality decreased tolerance of the distribution of university wealth. We discuss the implications of awareness of educational inequality for behaviors and educational policies.

Keywords: fairness; inequality; perceptions; university education; wealth.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Actual, perceived, and ideal distribution of university wealth by quintile for the top 800 and top 100 universities, Study 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Actual, perceived, and ideal distribution of university wealth by quintile when endowment consequence information was present or absent, Study 2.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Actual, perceived, and ideal university wealth by quintile when endowment consequence information was present or absent, Study 3. Note. Judgments focused on average endowment wealth per student.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Mean fairness of the distribution of university wealth depending on exposure to university endowment inequality information. Note. In addition to inequality information, Inequality Condition A informed participants about the association between university rank and endowment size, while Inequality Conditions B to D contained subcomponents of Condition A. Error bars indicate standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adler N. E., Epel E. S., Castellazzo G., Ickovics J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women. Health Psychology, 19, 586–592. - PubMed
    1. Arsenio W. F., Willems C. (2017). Adolescents’ conceptions of national wealth distribution: Connections with perceived societal fairness and academic plans. Developmental Psychology, 53, 463–474. - PubMed
    1. Bamfield L., Horton T. (2009). Understanding attitudes to tackling economic inequality. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
    1. Benedetti A., Chen S. (2018). High CEO-to-worker pay ratios negatively impact consumer and employee perceptions of companies. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 79, 378–393.
    1. Bullock H. E., Limbert W. M. (2003). Scaling the socioeconomic ladder: Low-income women’s perceptions of class status and opportunity. Journal of Social Issues, 59, 693–709.

LinkOut - more resources