The Most Economically Diverse Colleges

College is rapidly becoming an expensive proposition. Student loan debt recently topped $1 trillion dollars, and in the past several years tuition rates have risen far past the rate of inflation. Is college turning into something that is just for the rich-- like a country club or a private island?

U.S. News and World Report recently compiled a list of colleges that were bucking that trend. These schools are the most economically diverse in the country, based primarily on how many Pell Grants are awarded to students.

The Report has more:

The proportion of students on Pell grants, which are most often given to undergrads with family incomes under $20,000, isn't a perfect measure of an institution's efforts to achieve economic diversity: A college might enroll a large number of students just above the Pell cutoff, for instance, and percentages at public universities may reflect the wide variation from state to state in the number of qualified low-income students. 

Still, many experts say that Pell figures are the best available gauge of how many low-income undergrads there are on a given campus.

See The List:

New Mexico State University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 99%

Texas A&M University--Kingsville

Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 91%

Kent State UniversityPercent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 88%

Texas Southern University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 84%

South Carolina State University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 82%

Florida Institute of Technology
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 79%

Tennessee State University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 74%

Florida A&M University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 73%

National-Louis University
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 70%

University of Texas--El Paso
Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants: 68%