This is an excellent article about a hopeful program.
A New Push to Get Low-Income Students Through College – NYTimes.com.
I wrote my view.
“The most hopeful aspect of this program is Michael Bloomberg.
I say that because he took an important step in improving New York’s schools – putting the spotlight on the colleges that do a poor job at educating teachers, colleges like Columbia. (See comments and a link to the article at inside-higher-ed , my blog.) That shows he recognizes the problem.
This article itself puts the spotlight on how colleges have, and probably will continue, to respond to the threat of making less money.
For example, Notre Dame had a return on their endowment – currently $8.5 billion – of close to 11% a year over the past 10 years. Last year, they collected net tuition of about $250 million. I don’t think they would go broke by helping lower income kids.
Washington Univ. in St Louis (where I taught for a long time) is not very different. Yet, after President Obama’s conference on accessibility, they wrote about how their Chancellor explained to the group how his “three pronged” approach worked.
One prong was aid, and they boasted that “Wash. U.’s average financial aid package for students with need nearly doubled over the last decade.” Yet the figures, indicated that the opposite was true. That is when I wrote a post “Washington U. in St. Louis Touts Their Reduction in NET Financial Aid” on my blog. (Links to the article and the data can be found there.)
It is going to be hard for colleges to give up greed for civic responsibility. Maybe Bloomberg can do it. ”
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