Economic Mobility Score
ROI measures the financial return for an individual student. Economic mobility measures something bigger: whether an institution is an engine of upward movement for students from low-income families. Tuvelan integrates both perspectives.
The Chetty Mobility Report Cards
The foundational data comes from Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, and Yagan (2017), published through the Opportunity Insights project at Harvard. This dataset links anonymized tax records of over 30 million students to their parents’ income, covering attendance at 2,200+ colleges from the 1999-2013 cohorts.
The key metric is the mobility rate: the joint probability that a student comes from the bottom income quintile (family income below ~$25,000) AND reaches the top income quintile (individual income above ~$58,000 at age 32-34). This is computed as:
The first term captures access -- does the institution enroll low-income students at all? The second captures outcomes -- conditional on enrolling, does the institution propel them upward? An institution can score well on outcomes but poorly on mobility rate if it simply does not admit many low-income students.
Why Mobility Matters for Your Decision
Mobility data reveals institutional effectiveness that rankings miss. Consider three findings from the data that directly affect school selection:
Mid-tier publics outperform Ivies on mobility
CUNY schools, Cal State campuses, and UT system schools have higher absolute mobility rates than Harvard or Princeton. They enroll far more low-income students and produce comparable upward mobility conditional on enrollment. If you are from a low-income family, these schools may be the better bet.
Mobility is stable over time
Institutions with high mobility rates in the 1999-2003 cohorts maintained those rates in the 2008-2013 cohorts. This is not random noise -- it reflects durable institutional characteristics like support services, Pell grant generosity, and regional labor market connections.
Access and outcomes are separable
Some schools have strong outcomes (high Q1-to-Q5 rate) but low access (few Q1 students enrolled). Others have high access but weaker outcomes. Tuvelan reports both components separately so you can evaluate the institution’s commitment to mobility, not just its results with an already-selected student body.
How Tuvelan Integrates Mobility Data
The mobility score is not a standalone metric in Tuvelan -- it is woven into the ROI analysis in three ways:
- Composite ranking: Schools are scored on a weighted blend of IRR (financial return) and mobility rate (social return). Users can adjust the weighting in their profile settings.
- Income-conditional NPV: When you input your family income bracket, the Monte Carlo simulation conditions on Q1/Q2/Q3 starting position using the Chetty transition matrices. A Q1 student at a high-mobility school has a different expected trajectory than the institution’s overall median suggests.
- Access flag: Schools where the bottom-quintile enrollment share has fallen below 10% (indicating eroding access) are flagged. Declining access often precedes declining mobility outcomes with a 5-8 year lag.
Tuvelan updates the mobility dataset annually as Opportunity Insights releases new cohort data. The most recent update incorporates the 2013 entry cohort with outcomes measured at age 32-34.
Mobility Rate Distribution
Across all 2,200+ institutions in the dataset, the mobility rate distribution is highly skewed:
Top Decile
Mobility rate above 5%. Dominated by CUNY campuses (Baruch, City College, Lehman), certain Cal State campuses, and specialized institutions like UTEP and Stony Brook.
Median Institution
Mobility rate around 1.5-2.0%. Most state flagships and regional universities fall in this range. The rate is limited primarily by access (most enroll 15-25% Q1 students) rather than outcomes.
Ivy League
Mobility rate around 1.5-2.5% despite excellent outcomes (60%+ Q5 rate). Limited by access: fewer than 5% of students come from Q1 families at most Ivies.
Bottom Decile
Mobility rate below 0.5%. Typically for-profit institutions and some less selective private colleges with both low access and poor outcomes.
API Endpoint
Mobility data is available both on the institution search endpoint and within the full calculation response.
/v1/institutions/searchcurl https://tuvelan-api.smarttechinvest.com/v1/institutions/search?q=Baruch \ -H "X-API-Key: tuv_your_api_key_here"
The response includes mobility_rate, q1_share (bottom-quintile enrollment), q1_to_q5_rate (conditional upward mobility), and access_trend (rising/stable/declining low-income enrollment).