Increasing College Access: State and Local Efforts

A Forum — October 17, 2003

Background

As Congress reauthorizes the Higher Education Act (HEA), one of the major issues will be to improve college access by reviewing programs that help low-income, first generation college students attend and complete higher education. According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, cost factors prevent 48 percent of all college-qualified, low-income high school graduates from attending a four-year college and 22 percent from pursuing any college at all. And, students who need the most information about access to college and financial aid are getting the least (Harris Institute Poll, The Sallie Mae Fund, 2003).

In response to this problem, communities and states have created college access initiatives that offer multiple services including early college awareness programs, student and parental advising, prospective college visits, career guidance, financial counseling, and last dollar scholarships. At this AYPF forum, panelists representing three different programs and initiatives spoke about their various approaches to increasing college access and presented recommendations for policymakers engaged in the reauthorization of the HEA.

Forum Summary

Christina Milano is the Executive Director of the National College Access Network (NCAN), an association of 84 college access programs serving low-income, minority, and first generation students from high density urban and low-density rural schools. Milano has more than fifteen years working in college access programs. She said that while the issue of college access has been around for more than 100 years, it is more important than ever now that we have become a knowledge-based society in which completion of secondary and postsecondary schooling is a continental divide between the haves and the have-nots; college access programs help disadvantaged students cross this divide.

Lack of information and financial resources are serious obstacles for some youth. In a recent study, 45 percent of parents of 18 to 24 year-old students who make less than $25,000 said that they have no idea how to pay for college; Hispanic Americans and parents without a high school diploma are least likely to know how to pay. Twenty-five percent of young adults who are not in college say they would have gone if they had more information about financial aid. In addition, low-income students are more sensitive to rising college costs than others. Since it is not likely that there will be a reduction in college costs, if we are to increase access for low-income students, Milano said, college access programs that help disadvantaged students access and acquire financial resources are essential.

Milano posed a question, Why can't high school counselors help disadvantaged students acquire information about college? In many urban areas, the ratio of counselors to students is has high at 1 to 760. College access programs help meet this need. They provide financial aid and admissions counseling, as well as scholarships to cover unmet need for students who might otherwise not be able to attend college. “Do these college access programs work? Absolutely!” Milano said.

Expanding college access and completion should be a priority for legislators as they reauthorize the HEA, continued Milano. New programs are needed to help students access and stay in college until graduation. We need to make whatever changes are necessary to stay true to the original intent of the act: to help make college available and affordable for all students. Milano recommended that: support for community access programs should be increased; federal work-study programs should extend opportunities for students to work while also promoting success in school; Direct and Perkins loan limits should be increased; and Pell grants, which are now more important than ever, should continue to serve as the foundation of need-based aid and should be increased.

Wendy Ault is the Executive Director of the MELMAC Education Foundation, Maine's newest and largest foundation dedicated to advancing college access for all of the state's residents. MELMAC is funding an initiative over the next three years to increase the number of Maine students who enroll in college. The organization conducted a meta-analysis of research to determine the most pressing needs in the state. They found that although Maine has significantly higher test scores and graduation rates for K-12 education than other states, the percentage of Maine adults with at least a Bachelor's degree is significantly lower than the national average. In addition, high school graduates' aspirations, enrollment, and persistence rates for college are also lower than national rates.

MELMAC believes that early goal setting and understanding the range of college options are critical to realizing students' aspirations and closing the enrollment gap. Their research shows that a lack of planning, along with job and money considerations, influence students' decisions not to attend college following high school. For instance, they found that only one-third of students meet educators' recommendations for starting college planning by ninth grade, and consequently many students fail to enroll in the necessary courses in high school. In addition, MELMAC learned that many youth and their families did not engage in the early financial planning needed to afford a college education, and therefore, did not attend college.

In response to these data, MELMAC has developed an initiative, Connect Aspirations to a Plan that will focus on increasing the number of graduating seniors from Maine who enroll in college. The initiative will also help middle through high school students better understand their higher education options and to plan appropriately for continuing education. To support these goals, MELMAC will award 16 school-based grants and 12 community-based grants over the next several years. Through these efforts, MELMAC hopes to reach 32 high schools representing 25 percent of the state's public high school student population.

Patricia Lonergan, manager of the Early Awareness initiative at the Cleveland Scholarship Programs (CSP), one of the nation's oldest college access programs, spoke about barriers to college access in her community and the work her organization is doing to address them. In Cleveland , only 11 percent of adults age 25 or over have a bachelor's degree or higher; this is less than half the average for both the state of Ohio and the nation. CSP has identified four barriers that block access to higher education: insufficient financial resources, lack of preparedness in elementary and secondary schooling, inadequate access to the information necessary for college selection and admissions planning, and poor retention rates. Her organization works to provide access to higher education for the city's residents and serves over 30,000 individuals per year.

CSP has developed numerous programs to address these barriers. For example, CSP advisors provide early awareness advising for students in grades 1-8 and emphasize the importance of core curriculum for postsecondary education beginning in grade six. Lonergan identified some of the main challenges her organization faces as it works to overcome barriers to higher education: lack of access to core curriculum in some schools; insufficient parental support of postsecondary education; inadequate national student data for the purpose of program evaluation; and insufficient funding at both the local and the national levels.

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