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New Programs at University of Virginia Target Underserved Populations
"Economic diversity" has received growing attention in recent years as several prominent colleges and universities have announced plans to improve the representation of students from low-income families. These institutions, however, face a formidable challenge: low-income students currently are underrepresented across higher education, and the picture is especially bleak at top-tier institutions. One analysis by Anthony Carnevale and Steven Rose revealed that only 10 percent of students at the 146 most selective colleges and universities in the U.S. come from the bottom half of the socioeconomic scale—and only 3 percent come from the bottom quartile.
At the University of Virginia (UVa), two new programs are seeking to increase the numbers of students from low- and moderate-income families. The first of these programs, AccessUVa, focuses on affordability, providing significant financial support and guidance to students who attend UVa. The second, called the College Guides Program, seeks to raise awareness of higher education in underserved communities throughout Virginia. The university hopes that, together, these programs will make higher education possible for many new students.
AccessUVa
Located in Charlottesville, the University of Virginia is the flagship campus of Virginia’s public university system. Like other highly ranked public institutions, says Dean Edward Ayers of UVa’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Virginia is caught between its mission to provide students across the state with access to higher education and the reality of its selective admissions policies. This tension sometimes is understood in terms of a conflict between the public institution’s democratic responsibilities and the imperative for academic excellence.
Selectivity, however, often corresponds as closely to socioeconomic privilege as to excellence or merit—a fact that can be seen in the median family income of UVa students, which stands at more than $94,000. In Virginia, which contains some of the nation’s richest and poorest counties, this correlation is visible in the very geography of the state.
AccessUVa was created in the 2004-5 academic year partly to address these economic and geographic disparities. Designed to ensure that education at the University of Virginia is affordable to all, the program promises to help UVa better fulfill its democratic mission while still maintaining high academic standards.
The most significant component of AccessUVa is direct financial aid. The program covers full tuition, room and board, travel expenses, and books and supplies for all in-state students from families with incomes of up to 200 percent of the poverty line (or about $40,000 for a family of four). Currently, 201 students are receiving financial support through this part of the program.
AccessUVa also addresses the needs of moderate-income families by limiting debt and providing counseling. The program caps the amount of need-based loans offered to all students, regardless of state residency, at around 25 percent of the in-state cost of attending UVa for four years. It also helps students navigate the financial aid application process and other financing options.
The College Guides Program
The second part of UVa’s strategy to improve access to higher education, the College Guides Program, recognizes that affordability is only one of the hurdles facing low-income students: these students also often attend high schools with low college-going rates, lack family members with college experience, and belong to racial and ethnic groups that have historically been underrepresented in higher education. The program seeks to counter some of these disadvantages through high school outreach.
Now in its first year, the College Guides Program is overseen by Nicole Hurd, assistant dean and director of UVa’s Center for Undergraduate Excellence. As Hurd explains, the program trains recent UVa graduates to serve as “access counselors” in underserved Virginia communities. Guides agree to spend at least one year working full-time as high school counselors and are supported by living and housing stipends; they also receive education stipends that can be applied to college debt or to future educational expenses.
In collaboration with existing guidance counselors, college guides provide crucial advising services. They help twelfth-graders explore all of their options for postsecondary education—the program is not designed to recruit students to UVa in particular—and they assist them with completing applications, writing college essays, and filling out financial aid forms. Guides also familiarize high school students with “the language of higher education,” says Hurd, which can involve everything from knowing what a dean is to learning about the college curriculum. They work with younger students as well, visiting middle schools to promote early awareness of higher education, helping ninth- and tenth-graders choose courses that will prepare them for college, and assisting eleventh-graders with SAT preparation.
Although the College Guides Program is currently very small—there are just fourteen guides spread across Virginia this year—its impact is already being felt. According to Hurd, this year’s guides conducted over 2,500 one-on-one meetings with students, and they reached many other students through workshops and class visits. This kind of advising is much in demand in public high schools: in Virginia, there is an average of just one guidance counselor for every 353 students, a ratio that is close to the national average.
The results of UVa's efforts to raise awareness of the benefits of higher education are already beginning to emerge. At one high school in the rural southwestern corner of Virginia, college-going rates are expected to jump from 25 percent last year to as much as 75 percent this year. And a number of colleges in the state have reported that applications from high schools with college guides are up.
The impact of college guides will likely become even more noticeable as the program expands in the coming years. In one sign of the program’s early success, seven of this year’s guides have asked to continue on into a second year, and Hurd hopes that they will be joined by twenty new guides. In the future, she says, UVa may also begin training “transfer guides,” who would work with the state’s community colleges to advise students on transferring from two-year to four-year institutions.
Building Economic Diversity
Innovations like AccessUVa and the College Guides Program point to the multiple levels at which college access and success must be addressed. Ensuring affordability—the goal of AccessUVa—is one way of making higher education possible for all students. Reaching out to high schools to improve college preparation and raise awareness is another. Beyond these matters of access are the challenges of retaining and graduating low-income students—challenges that remain largely outside the scope of AccessUVa and the College Guides Program.
Building and sustaining such economic diversity is especially important at state-supported schools, according to Dean Ayers. The University of Virginia has a responsibility, he says, to strive to represent the state’s diversity in its student body. Fortunately, the bounded geographical range of state schools gives the university “an opportunity to do a particularly targeted kind of outreach.” “By focusing in particular places where particular people live,” says Ayers, UVa’s new programs are allowing the school “to reach kids who seem beyond the call of the university.”
As an example of the results such outreach can bring, Nicole Hurd cites one of the high schools involved in the College Guides Program. This year, the University of Virginia received an application from a well-qualified first-generation student at that high school. The student had not seriously considered going to college—and had certainly not considered going to UVa—before talking with his college guide, and his application was only the second from the high school to be received by UVa in the past twenty-six years. In the end, the student was admitted to the university under early decision and awarded full financial support through AccessUVa, Hurd says—a promising indication of the way UVa's two new economic diversity programs can work together to expand access to higher education.
More information about AccessUVa is available online. The Facts and Figures section of this month’s newsletter contains information about the challenges faced by first-generation students after they enroll in college. The study of college admissions by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose cited above is available online from the Century Foundation.
AAC&U is working on issues related to college access and success through its Making Excellence Inclusive initiative and in its role as a lead partner in the Pathways to College Network.
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