Students from racial and ethnic minorities and other firstgeneration college students have suffered most from these inadequacies. I believe other critical elements for college campuses are being more student-centered, focusing on a genuine concern for the needs and welfare of students rather than of the convenience of the institution, and/or the needs of faculty and staff. Preventative actions can be most effective through being proactive and addressing the needs of minor issues early on before blossoming into major problems.
College campuses must be more diversified and have tailored or customized programs that meet the needs of different student subpopulations. A student should experience a comprehensive (holistic) approach that focuses on the student as a whole person by addressing the full range of academic and nonacademic factors which affect student success. (Student Success in Higher Education, 2011).
We believe that many of today’s policy discussions about higher education are not sufficiently connected to a clear set of understanding about what student success should look like. What the appropriate roles and responsibilities are of institutions, faculty and staff. Challenges When addressing the issues of challenges, students that are most likely to not remain in college have been described as at risk, low-income, first-generation, underprepared, and historically underrepresented. What prevents Student Success?
According to (Nelnet, Education Loan Servicing) some important obstacles have been: 0 Finances/needs Relationship issues Under-prepared, basic skill needs O Physical & mental health challenges O Dependent-care O Language barriers Transportation First generation, no role models of family support O Housing Transition difficulties Today’s Challenges The historic commitment of the last two generations to the development of community colleges created a prodigious engine of opportunity and economic growth. All told, by 2010 community colleges enrolled more than 13 million students in credit and noncredit courses annually.
They have prepared millions of students for careers and transfer to baccalaureate institutions. Even now, in the mist of an economy struggling to recover, community colleges have responded to calls for retreading the American workforce, training displaced workers, and helping develop new industries. For a remarkably diverse student population, they have served as the gateway to higher education and thus to the middle class. It is a record for which all American can take great pride. Despite these historic successes, and amidst serious contemporary challenges, community colleges need to be redesigned for new times.
What we find today are student success rates that are unacceptably low, employment preparation that is inadequately connected to job market needs, and disconnects in transitions between high schools, community colleges, historically underfunded, also have been financed in ways that encourage enrollment growth although frequently without adequately supporting that growth, and largely without incentives for promoting student success. These conditions hinder middle-class students and have a devastating effect on low-income students of color, those often in greatest need of what community colleges have to offer. American Association of Community Colleges).
The need to close challenges of the achievement gap affecting low-income, underrepresented students is a global issue. Among the troubling consequences of this worldwide educational divide is an inadequate pool of leaders possessing the myriad of skills required for societies to prosper, the cross-cultural knowledge and appreciation, high order analytical skills, and the ethical fortitude needed to respond to today’s global realities.
The societies that will prosper in the 21st century will be those that effectively educate the greatest proportion of their population. Colleges and universities provide a wide array of public goods to society to help them prosper; most obvious is the generation of a well-educated citizenry, fully armed with the capacity to provide leadership for the future. Colleges and universities have an almost unique capacity in our country to level the highly unequal playing field created by the large gap between the rich and the poor.
This paper describes problems with unequal college access, the social and structural challenges of preparing low-income students for college, and the strategies that successful programs have used to overcome those challenges for thousands of low-income students. The paper concludes with a call to action for organizations and institutions to support existing programs and to develop new college preparation initiatives for talented, low-income youth. Background: The Problem with Unequal Access in the American public arena, colleges and universities are widely seen as critical for the social mobility of our citizens.
There have been many advances in access to higher education because of the GI Bill, desegregation, and the increase in high school graduation rates from 42% in the 1950’s to over 80% in 2002. Nonetheless, obstacles to truly democratic access to education persist. Students from wealthy backgrounds are overrepresented at selective colleges and universities, while those from poorer homes (below median income) are rarely seen. In 2004-2005 one-third of students at all four-year public and private colleges received Pell Grant aid.
Yet only 13% of the undergraduates at the country’s 50 wealthiest (and most selective) private colleges were Pell Grant recipients. In 2004-2005 Pell Grant recipients comprised less than 10% of the student body at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. In the 146 most selective four-year colleges (defined in the 24th edition of Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges) students in the highest socioeconomic status quartile comprise 74% of the student population at colleges and universities, while students in the combined bottom two quartiles comprise only 10%; students in the bottom quartile alone comprise only 3%.
Is this simply a question of not having students from lower income levels ready to study in such schools? The existing research suggests that there are, in fact, enough academically qualified, low-income students to fill a much larger number of spaces in the nation’s selective colleges and universities. In 2003, for example, students from families with incomes below $41,000 comprised 18% of students scoring 1220 or above on the SAT (or SAT equivalent score of ACT) and 16% of students scoring 1300 or above.
In addition to these high achievers, there are low-income students with tremendous academic potential from urban and rural schools who may suffer from the widely recognized socioeconomic biases in standardized tests or the simple lack of adequate test preparation. A recent report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Civic Enterprises, LLC revealed that “high-achieving lower-income students are less likely to attend the most selective colleges (19% versus 29%), more likely to attend the least selective colleges (21% versus 14%); and less likely to graduate when they attend the least selective colleges (56% versus 83%).
The same report revealed that the success rate of low-income students increased with the selectivity of the school. Institutional Barriers Institutional barriers for low-income students seeking to attend selective colleges and universities include common practices and procedures within high schools, colleges, and the educational system in general, according to Forum participants. One of the most significant challenges facing students with high academic potential is the lack of a rigorous, college preparatory curriculum at their high school.
Moreover, participants noted that, in cases where such advanced and college preparatory curriculum existed, some school districts were eliminating these classes to make room for more basic and remedial classes developed to address state standardized testing which has been increasingly high stakes in the era of the No Child Left Behind Act. Participants also noted that these schools usually located in poorer urban and rural communities, lacked the resources to attract high quality teachers who are so important to students’ intellectual development.
Furthermore, many of their students attended high schools that lacked adequate financial resources to create and sustain advanced academic courses, purchase laboratory equipment and computers, and maintain research facilities that promote student learning. The data revealed three essential challenges related to limited resources: 1. Obtaining sustained financial support for multi-year programs and services, 2. Establishing realistic and attainable goals, and 3. Developing solid relationships with schools, community partners, and families. Jason R. Klugman, PH. D, Goldman Sachs Foundation and Princeton University 2009). When addressing issues of challenges, students most likely to not complete college have been historically unrepresented, first generation, low-income, at-risk students who are not commented to education. Dues to the unique needs of these students, many learning community programs have been designed to assist with their needs (Jaffee, 2007; Hotchkiss, Moore, & Pitts, 2006; Pascarella, Pierson, Wolnaik, & Terenzini, 2004).
