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When Access is Not Enough
by Vincent Tinto, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
While the numbers of low-income students attending college have increased over the past twenty years, the gap in completion of bachelor’s degrees between low-income and higher-income students has not decreased. In fact, though more low-income students are attending college, fewer are graduating. Vincent Tinto, chairman of the Higher Education Program at Syracuse University and a Carnegie Foundation visiting scholar, points out in this opinion piece that “the open door to American higher education has become a revolving door.”
Tinto writes that the well-documented lack of academic preparation that disproportionately affects low-income students is not being sufficiently addressed at many colleges and universities. Many schools use the “add a course” strategy of offering or requiring freshman seminars or basic skills courses, without actually changing the character of low-income students’ educational experiences, Tinto argues. Since most low-income students look at college not in terms of the first year, the second year, and so on, but instead in terms of each course as it comes along, colleges must direct effort toward supporting low-income students one course at a time. Low-income students succeed not by chance, Tinto writes, but when their institutions provide “intentional, structured, and proactive” programs that change the way we support them.
The entire article may be read on the Carnegie Foundation’s Web site. See Making Excellence Inclusive for information about AAC&U’s resources on this topic.
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