Tufts/MACC Receives Grant to Increase College Access in Massachusetts

April  7, 2007, Press Release-Tufts University and Massachusetts Campus Compact (MACC) have received a $1 million grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to recruit and train Tufts seniors to work full time for one to two years following graduation as advisers to high school students, to help boost college enrollment rates of high-achieving, low-income high school students. MACC is a nonprofit coalition of Massachusetts college and university presidents committed to developing the civic skills of students.

The grant, which will fund the College Advising Corps initiative, is part of a nationwide initiative aimed at significantly increasing college enrollment and graduation among low-income high school and community college students. It follows the tradition of the AmeriCorps and Teach for America programs and will be based at Tisch College and MACC.

"Education should not be a luxury for the privileged few," said Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow. "This program will change the lives of thousands of Massachusetts students who currently are missing the information and support they need to succeed."

Under the grant, Tisch and MACC will develop a college-advising program based on a successful model devised by the University of Virginia and funded by the Foundation.

"The goal of this program is to combat staggering rates of college-qualified, low-income high school graduates who fail to even consider attending college by providing college admission and financial aid guidance to disadvantaged students," said Tisch College Associate Dean Nancy Wilson.

According to the Foundation, about four million potential college degree recipients are estimated to have been "lost" during the past two decades, including many of America's top-performing, lower-income students.

"Most Tufts students are aware of the privilege of a Tufts education and many want to share this with others in the work they do after graduation," said Wilson. "They are aware of the inequities of the educational system, with differences in access based on socioeconomic, racial, and immigration status. The College Advising Corps provides an excellent opportunity for them to pursue those goals."

Wilson said the new program at Tufts will begin recruiting this month and will hire five Corps members for its first year. The Corps will increase to 10 in the second year, and 15 in the third and fourth years. Corps members will start their year of service with training in August. The Tufts/MACC program will hire only Tufts graduates, and will place them at high schools throughout the state, working through MACC member colleges.

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, according to the Foundation.

The groundbreaking "College Advising Corps" program, funded by the Foundation at the University of Virginia, 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.

This 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 high schools were the guides work," said Josh Wyner, Vice-President of Programs for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. "At one Virginia high school, we saw a 23 percent jump in the college admissions acceptance rate."

The other universities also receiving Cooke Foundation grants to replicate the College Advising Corps program are Brown University, Franklin and Marshall College, Loyola College in Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alabama, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Missouri, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah.