This opinion article, written by Nick Hillman, originally appeared in USA Today.

Early decision letters from top-tier schools are starting to go out — which means we’re about to be inundated with stats about competitive admissions and low acceptance rates. But while you wouldn’t know it from a quick glance at the news headlines, where Harvard and Yale get top billing, fewer than 1 in 10 American students attend selective colleges. 

In reality, broad-access colleges that admit most applicants account for the lion’s share of enrollments, and serve 75% of the nation’s lowest-income students. 

But the selective schools that get the most media fanfare also have the most of something else: money. And money matters in U.S. higher education. In fact, it’s the largest single factor correlated with student success. 

When colleges spend more on teaching and learning, their students graduate at higher rates and take less time to earn a degree. Yet the small handful of selective colleges that spend the most enroll too few low-income students and students of color, and the much larger proportion of schools that enroll the majority of low-income students and students of color have the least to spend. 

Money matters in higher education

But what if the colleges that serve the most underrepresented students had access to the same financial resources as the nation’s wealthiest colleges? With the think tank Third Way, I recently published a report that unpacks that question by looking at which students are enrolling where, and how much their colleges are spending on their education.

What I found is alarming — and must be untenable for those of us who believe in higher education as a catalyst for socioeconomic opportunity and upward mobility.

Highly selective private research universities spend as much as $75,000 to educate a single student. Per-student spending among the poorest-funded colleges — broad access institutions — does not reach even a third of that amount in any sector. This is fundamentally unfair, and it is our nation’s low-income students and students of color who are most affected by this inequality.

About 40% of Hispanic students and 30% of Black students and students receiving Pell Grants (who typically come from families earning less than $30,000) attend the poorest-funded colleges. And a growing percentage of Pell Grant recipients and Black students are enrolling in the poorest-funded colleges over time — which is likely a leading culprit for the glaring equity gaps by race and income that persist across higher education.

Build up schools to close equity gap

To date, policies designed to improve opportunities and outcomes for underrepresented students have largely focused on guiding those students to enroll in schools with more resources and better track records of success. My research shows that this simply isn’t enough.

Instead, it’s time for policymakers to address the stark inequality in colleges’ financial resources by investing directly in broad access institutions — building up the very schools that are already serving large proportions of low-income students and students of color.

It’s time for federal and state legislators to work together to make targeted public investments, close resource gaps, and address structural barriers to opportunity that have plagued the higher education system for decades and that have been made only more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic and our national reckoning on racial justice.

It’s time for a real conversation about equity-based funding in U.S. higher education.