Why aren’t more Philly students attending these five city universities?

Sean Vereen was leading a group of middle-school students around Temple University’s campus when he felt a tug on the sleeve of his suit. One of the boys from North Philly was looking up at him after taking in the campus all around them.

“He [asked], ‘Could I go to school here?’” Vereen, the co-president of the education nonprofit Heights Philadelphia, remembered.

Heights works with Philly students to create pathways to college, and one part of the programming is to get kids onto the campuses of the universities in the city.

“He sees that big Temple ‘T’ his whole life, but he hadn’t experienced [it],” Vereen said. “Even though this is the only public university in his hometown, he was not sure if he belonged there.”

Philadelphia’s most renowned universities — Temple, Penn, Drexel, La Salle, and St. Joseph’s — have enormous impacts on the city, with combined budgets of over $6 billion. But their impact on students from Philadelphia is much smaller.

About 12,500 students graduate from Philadelphia high schools each year, and the combined first-year classes of these five universities add up to roughly 11,600 students. Yet,even with a large pool of high school graduates and available university slots, relatively few Philly kids go on to attend these schools.

Just 1,605 students, or about 14% of the combined first-year classes of those five universities, are from Philadelphia proper.

According to university spokespersons, at Penn, 149 first-year students are from Philadelphia, or 6% of the class. At Temple, 720 students are from Philly, about 15% of its class. Drexel has 420 students from the city, or 14% of its first-year class. At St. Joseph’s, there are 100 students from Philadelphia schools, or 9% of the class. And La Salle enrolls the greatest percentage of students from Philadelphia, with 216 students making up 42% of its first-year class.

While these universities have made efforts in recent years to increase their outreach toward local students, accessibility remains an issue.

“Some of these schools that are right in our backyard are the hardest ones for the kids to navigate.”

“Some of these schools that are right in our backyard are the hardest ones for the kids to navigate and they’re getting the least amount of money from them,” said Carmen Rodi, a counselor at Horace Furness High School in South Philly.

“There just seems to be [a] giant disconnect there.”

“I love the schools in Philadelphia, and I think [it’s] a great place to go [to college]. It’s just that sometimes the cost can be a little bit prohibitive,” said Andrew Dunakin, a counselor at Northeast High School.

The median household income in Philadelphia is currently around $53,000. After including an average amount of grants and scholarships, it would cost the median-income family over $20,000 per year for a child to attend any of the five aforementioned universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s IPEDS database.

Dunakin described how his students often end up attending the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) or schools outside of the city, like Penn State Abington, because of financial constraints.

Kimberly Lent, a counselor at Paul Robeson High School in West Philly, said that about half of her students who do attend college also end up at CCP — some for nonfinancial reasons, like CCP’s ESL programs, which are less common at the big-name universities.

“We have a ton of students who want to be in Philly,” she said, including some students who reason that staying in Philadelphia means they can save money by commuting to school instead of living on campus.

In the end, their decision on where to go usually comes down to money.

“We have a ton of students who want to be in Philly.”

Dunakin agrees. “They’re applying to places that they think they want to go to because they’ve heard of them or maybe they’re a great fit for them. But in the end, the cost always becomes a reality,” he said.

“Money is always, in the end, [going to] be the main factor.”

Financial aid opens some doors, but it is not always a sure thing for Philly students.

Rodi pointed out how almost half of her students are undocumented immigrants, which disqualifies them from receiving aid like FAFSA or some scholarships.

» READ MORE: A MILLION MILES AWAY - Temple, Philadelphia’s ‘diversity university,’ has seen a plummeting share of Black students over the last 25 years, even as it rapidly expanded enrollment.

“Most of these kids are working full-time jobs and helping to pay rent. Some of them are living on their own. Some of them are in very unstable housing [and] family conditions. They’re really the backbone of the restaurant industry in Philly, but often get overlooked,” she said.

“Some of them [have told me], ‘I don’t want to be working in a restaurant for the rest of my life, but I don’t know what else is out there.’ And that’s a sentiment that many of them have. … They start out wanting to study and have these big dreams, but between all these different systemic issues, they’re not able to fulfill that [dream].”

Assuming an enrollee does receive an average amount of grants and scholarships, the most affordable university in Philadelphia is Penn, which would cost $3,300 for the median-income Philly family, according to IPEDS. This may seem counterintuitive, but in recent years, the wealthiest colleges are often more willing and able to meet financial needs and operate with “need-blind” admissions policies.

But, of course, it is significantly more difficult to gain admission to the Ivy League school. Penn admits only 6% of its applicants, whereas Drexel, Temple, St. Joseph’s, and La Salle each admit about three-quarters or more of their applicants.

Districtwide, only 22% of students meet state standards in math, and 36% in reading, which has an impact on the number of admissions.

“Our [academic] programs tend to be not as strong as they need to be for our students to excel in college,“ said Paul Robeson’s Lent. “So we talk to … different professors at Penn, at Drexel, at CCP. And we try to figure out, what can we do as a high school? But I think [that effort] has to be with not just our school, [but] with all the high schools in Philadelphia and with all the colleges.”

Over the years, Temple has worked to increase its accessibility with programs like Cecil B. Moore Scholars, which creates a pathway to Temple for 20 to 25 students from the eight zip codes neighboring the university and provides them with full tuition.

Drexel has made similar progress, as part of a commitment to growing its number of Philly enrollees. The school’s Liberty Scholars program currently offers 50 full scholarships to Philadelphia students each year. Drexel also has partnerships with several district schools to provide resources and facility improvements.

But Horace Furness’ Rodi said that the structure behind the admissions and recruitment process needs to change for the colleges to feel more attainable for students.

“The admissions counselors, their job is to just enroll the student. Get the applications in, make the enrollment, and then they move on to the next year [of students],” she said. She added that she wished that there was more room in the process for making students feel welcome, and connecting them with resources.

Temple has been the focus of most recent coverage surrounding college accessibility in Philadelphia, in particular its percentage of local Black students. Karin Mormando, director of admissions at Temple, said that news coverage has opened a wider discussion at the university about how the school can become a more realistic option for kids from Philly.

“We continually want to evolve and grow, and be that pipeline to a college degree for the city of Philadelphia,” she said. Part of creating that kind of pipeline means building meaningful relationships between students and these prospective schools, so that the colleges feel more realistic for them.”

» READ MORE: How kids get into Philadelphia’s special admissions schools has changed drastically. Some families are crying foul

Heights’ Vereen said that while this sort of commitment is helpful, it doesn’t fully capture why he believes it is so crucial to get more Philadelphia students into the city’s most influential schools.

“It’s beyond an obligation,” he said. “We think about Benjamin Franklin, who was a poor kid with no money in his pocket, who helped found the University of Pennsylvania. We think about Temple and its idea that it was founded for working-class students.”

“I love the schools in Philadelphia, and I think [it’s] a great place to go [to college].”

Vereen once worked in Penn’s admissions office, where he prioritized increasing racial representation. He maintained that the fates of the city’s youth are intimately linked with those of its biggest and most impactful schools.

“So it’s not just that, oh, your flag is flying over this town and therefore you should take some kids. The health of the institutions are really tied up in how well our young people will do. There is [not] a sense of doing this out of [an] obligation. It’s a necessity.”