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Group Issues Guidelines for Improving Access
The Pathways to College Network, a national alliance of thirty-four education groups and private foundations, released a report in February titled A Shared Agenda: A Leadership Challenge to Improve College Access and Success. The report recommends ways to improve college access for traditionally underserved individuals such as first-generation college students, low-income students, underrepresented minorities, and students with disabilities.
The alliance makes its recommendations because of what it calls a sizable achievement gap that still exists in higher education despite three decades of national investment in equal educational opportunity. For example, the report says, 82 percent of high school graduates from the top-income quartile enroll in college, while only 57 percent of students from the bottom-income quartile do so. By their late twenties, more than one-third of whites have at least a bachelor's degree, but only 18 percent of African Americans and 10 percent of Hispanics have earned such a degree.
Education leaders should expect that underserved students can be prepared to enroll and succeed in college, says the report, and they should provide college-preparatory tools for such students and their families. The report also recommends that educators embrace social, cultural, and learning-style differences; maintain sufficient financial and human resources to help underserved students prepare for and succeed in college; and assess policies, programs, practices, and institutional effectiveness regularly.
The report makes more specific recommendations for leaders in different areas. State and federal officials should mandate rigorous curricula and provide sufficient funding for programs, teachers, and students; and school leaders should require a college-preparatory curriculum for all students and ensure that teachers are prepared to address different learning styles and cultural backgrounds. College leaders need to be clear about the skills and knowledge expected of incoming students, and community leaders should work with students and families to instill and reinforce the belief that all students must prepare for postsecondary education. In turn, communities and families must push schools and government to adopt a goal of universal college readiness and achievement.
The next step is to get the information into the hands of as many decision makers as possible, the alliance says. Many of the thirty-four groups that make up the Pathways to College Network, such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the American Association of Community Colleges, and the College Board, have disseminated key components of the report to their memberships. Alma Clayton-Pedersen, vice president for education and institutional renewal at AAC&U, notes that it is important to help faculty think differently about what they are doing, while at the same time not burdening them with extra responsibilities. "We're not asking every member to do all the work," says Clayton-Pedersen, "but rather asking where it makes sense for their institutions to have a role. We can't ask educators to do more without giving recognition to the fact that they're already overburdened."
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