LANSDOWNE, Va., March 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation today awards ten $1 million grants to initiatives in nine states aimed at significantly increasing college enrollment and graduation among low- income high school and community college students.
The grant recipients are Brown University, Franklin & Marshall College, Loyola College in Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, Tufts University in collaboration with the Massachusetts Campus Compact, the University of Alabama, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Missouri- Columbia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in partnership with the National College Access Network, will also house the National College Advising Corps Coordinating Office to support the development of the programs and encourage other universities to start similar programs.
Following in the tradition of the AmeriCorps and Teach for America programs, the College Advising Corps initiative will recruit and train college seniors to work full time as advisers for one or two years following graduation. The ten programs will provide support for high school students in lower-income neighborhoods to help them apply to a wide range of postsecondary institutions that fit their individual academic profiles, career goals, and personal circumstances. The program is based on a successful model created by the University of Virginia (UVA) and funded by a lead grant from the Foundation. The National College Advising Corps Office will be directed by Dr. Nicole Hurd, who crafted the original UVA program.
The goal is to combat staggering rates of college-qualified, low-income high school graduates who fail to earn bachelor's degrees by providing college admission and financial aid guidance to disadvantaged students. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that four million potential college degree recipients -- all academically prepared, lower-income students -- have been "lost" during the past two decades. And as the Foundation's own research reveals, among these students are many of America's top-performing, lower- income students.
"We are squandering a huge national resource when millions of America's best high school graduates never get to college, or fail to advance beyond a two-year community college program," said Foundation Executive Director Matthew J. Quinn. "Our Foundation is committed to addressing the college enrollment gap by providing crucial information to promising students facing financial barriers."
Lack of information about admissions and financial aid is a significant barrier to college for low-income students -- who are much less likely than their counterparts in wealthy communities to have access to SAT preparation, college application guidance, and information about financial aid. On average there is only one high school counselor for every 488 American public high school students.
The groundbreaking UVA "College Guide" program places recent college graduates in communities where college-going rates are below the state average, to help students plan for and complete the college application process. At one participating Virginia school, the rate of senior class members admitted to postsecondary education rose by more than 20 percent in one year. The program was recently expanded to include counseling for community college students interested in transferring to four-year institutions. Recent Cooke Foundation-funded research also underscores the importance of personal transfer counseling for low-income students who attend community college and the need to increase transfer advising on community college campuses.
"This innovative approach has succeeded in Virginia with notable increases in applications to colleges in the high schools where the guides work," said Josh Wyner, the Foundation's vice president of programs. "Now low-income students nationwide will get access to much-needed guidance from mentors fresh out of college who can really inspire them."
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private, independent foundation established in 2000 by the estate of Jack Kent Cooke to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. It focuses in particular on students with financial need. The Foundation's programs include scholarships to undergraduate, graduate and high school students, and grants to organizations that serve high-achieving students with financial need.
Summaries of the work of the ten university-based initiatives, the program at the University of Virginia and the national office are online at:
jackkentcookefoundation.org/jkcf_web/content.aspx?page=2314313&mode=stage
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
