Potential Reasons Why Top Students From Impoverished Backgrounds Often Do Not Apply To The Best Universities And The Kind Of Actions That Can Be Taken To Change Such Behavior

Abstract

The development of behavioral economics has precisely evinced that human beings are not always rational actors, and that instead, people often rely on mental shortcuts when making decisions. This is however a huge problem and when it comes to the United States, students from low-income backgrounds in the United States continue to be underrepresented in prestigious colleges despite increasing efforts to encourage diversity and inclusion in higher education. This research attempts to investigate the causes of this underrepresentation from a behavioral economic perspective, particularly among top students from impoverished households who do not apply to prestigious universities in the United States. It also identifies the potential biases and heuristics that hinder students from applying to the best universities in the United States. The biases are conformity bias, representativeness bias, and status quo bias. Policies that can potentially change such behavior, and promote greater equity and access to higher education are also suggested