That’s the conclusion of a study just released by the Pew Charitable Trusts in which Cornell University researcher Michael Lovenheim looks at data from the 2001-2005 housing boom and finds a direct correlation between higher-education attainment and housing wealth for middle-class families.

“Higher education decisions are highly sensitive to fluctuations in family resources,” says the report, called Housing Wealth and Higher Education: Building a Foundation for Economic Mobility. “The model shows that low- and middle-income students whose families experienced increases in housing wealth just before reaching college age were more likely to attend college, more likely to attend higher-quality universities, and more likely to graduate.”

Unfortunately, there’s a negative flip side to that: “The recent housing bust and resulting decrease in wealth could negatively impact the post-secondary decisions of low- and middle-income families.”

Among the findings:

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/HousingWealthandHigherEd.pdf