Vermont Works to Improve Achievement for Low-income Students
Vermont State Colleges will take on the challenge of improving college access and achievement rates for low-income students. Adding to that challenge in Vermont is the high cost of attending college. The average in-state tuition to attend a four-year public school (the University of Vermont or a state college) – is the highest in the country, according to an annual survey by the College Board.
In the new national campaign, the state colleges join 18 other public systems around the nation – among them, the State University of New York and the California State University system – in pledging by 2015 to significantly decrease the disparities in access and achievement rates between low-income and minority students and their more privileged counterparts.
In Vermont, an overwhelmingly white state where just 5 percent of the state college enrollment is minority, the focus will be on stepping up college access and success rates for low-income and first-generation attendees, said Karrin Wilks, senior vice president of Vermont State Colleges.
Of the current state college enrollment, she said, 35 percent of the students are eligible for Pell grants, a federal aid program for lower-income families, and 48 percent are the first in their families to attend college. Nationally, according to The Education Trust, low-income students receive bachelor’s degrees at about one-eighth the rate for their “more advantaged counterparts” by age 24, and 9 percent compared with 75 percent. (For African-American students, the rate is half that for white students, and for Latino students, one-third.)
To help address the problem, the Vermont Student Assistance Corp. has begun a statewide program that seeks to push lower-income and first-generation students toward college. About 70 percent of Vermont’s high school students aspire to attend college; the goal is to raise that to 90 percent.
— Teachers of Color
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