Researchers at Northwestern University recently tested what happens when students in different zip codes search Google for “colleges.” They found that students from lower-income areas are systematically shown colleges with poorer outcomes, Samantha Powers wrote in Washington Monthly’s 2026 College Guide and Rankings.
These include lower graduation rates, higher loan-default rates, and weaker earnings outcomes. They do that even when those students would have qualified for, and often paid less at, more selective schools. Affluent students, by contrast, were up to three times more likely to see results from colleges with strong track records. That gap between lower- and higher-income students held whether researchers looked at ordinary search results or Google’s newer AI-generated summaries.
This raises a question. Who fills the gap when a school doesn’t have the staff to guide students through the search themselves? The same research points to what actually closes that gap. It’s a real conversation with a counselor.
