Our Job - Keeping Kids in School

Thank you, Gates Foundation. Many of the high school students we work with, and their parents, believe that college is out of their reach today. They believe that they just can't afford it or that the sacrifices would be too great. We work hard with them, helping them complete financial aid forms, looking for scholarships, rehearsing alternative scenarios, but it's easy for us to get discouraged, too. So, thanks for paying attention, Gates Foundation. Thanks for the help.

Gates Grants Aim to Help Low-Income Students Finish College - NYTimes.com: "“The people who survive the best have always been and continue to be the ones with postsecondary education,” Dr. Carnevale said, adding that the unemployment rate for people without a college education was generally four times as high as for those with a two- or four-year degree.

Most of the foundation’s money would go not directly to students but to programs intended to help them make it through college.

The Gates Foundation said that doubling the numbers of low-income students who earned a postsecondary degree or vocational degree by age 26 would translate into an increase of about 250,000 graduates each year.

The goal is attainable, said Dr. Carnevale, whose research shows that each year there are 560,000 students who graduate in the top half of their high school class — and have the test scores that show they could succeed in college — but who fail to earn a two- or four-year degree within eight years of graduating."