A case study in lifting college attendance, By David Leonhardt, June 10, 2014, New York Times: “Sydney Nye was a straight-A student with an SAT score high enough to apply to any college in the country. When her senior year of high school in Wilmington, Del., started about nine months ago, she had dreams of becoming a chemical engineer. But she did not spend much time dreaming about where she would go to college. The notion of attending anything other than a local college seemed too far-fetched. She knew her parents — a dental assistant and a hairdresser, neither of whom had attended college — would have a hard time paying the nearly $100 application fee to elite colleges, let alone the tuition . . . “
Tag: Financial aid
College Graduation Gap
Who gets to graduate? By Paul Tough, May 18, 2014, New York Times: “For as long as she could remember, Vanessa Brewer had her mind set on going to college. The image of herself as a college student appealed to her — independent, intelligent, a young woman full of potential — but it was more than that; it was a chance to rewrite the ending to a family story that went off track 18 years earlier, when Vanessa’s mother, then a high-achieving high-school senior in a small town in Arkansas, became pregnant with Vanessa. Vanessa’s mom did better than most teenage mothers. She married her high-school boyfriend, and when Vanessa was 9, they moved to Mesquite, a working-class suburb of Dallas, where she worked for a mortgage company. Vanessa’s parents divorced when she was 12, and money. . .”
College Affordability
College affordability: Low-income students bearing brunt of price hikes at some West Michigan schools, By Brian McVicar, April 2, 2014, mlive.com: “Students from low-income families are seeing college costs rise at a greater rate than their wealthy counterparts at several West Michigan schools, a trend that could hurt the poor as the cost of obtaining a degree continues to rise. The trend can be seen at schools such as Hope College, Calvin College, Cornerstone University and Grand Valley State University, federal data show…”