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The “college for all” mission seems so cartoony – it assumes that the college experience is one thing and students are one thing and those two things should always become one thing.  But we can see that there are several dominant cultural “approaches” to college – from Asher Roth’s “I love college” to “Getting my piece of paper” to “Full-hearted intellectual adventure” (ok, the last one might not be one of the dominant ones) that actually make college different “things”. 

I’m curious whether your research projects brought the issue of
student orientation towards college and the effects of that
orientation on outcomes and experience into focus. How did orientation change during student experience in college – how did initial and later orientations correlate with challenges described in your interview above?  Did the college-program at “Bridges” focus on nuts & bolts and various “aspects” of college (like at the small progressive public school where I teach in Manhattan) or did it make a strong argument for a particular approach to college?

Was the “why college” question answered coherently by “Bridges”?  Was the answer socio-economic, political, intellectual, or aesthetic?  Was that answer internalized by students or did they (as “Learning to Labor” would suggest) reinterpret these answers in the light of their own situations and positionally-influenced worldviews?  How did graduates and non-graduates articulate their paths – as unproblematized successes and failures or in more nuanced terms? 

Thank you! 

The authors write that the policy implications of their research “means vastly increasing the resources for hiring and training college counselors in schools, providing resources to help students visit college campuses and take part in programs on these campuses, as well as training teachers and providing curriculum to high schools to do work with students about college-going, beginning in middle school.”

When the data show that just 21% of our children are able to pursue a college preparatory program while in high school – or at least that that most of our HS grads require remedial classes when they get to college – it seems to me the problem is less an issue of guidance once they get to 10th grade, but a lack of attention to what we teach them prior to high school.

All the guidance in the world won’t change a kid whose options have already been restricted by poor curricular choices in elementary and middle school.

We appreciate the comments of readers, and below respond together
to them:

We appreciate the comments of readers, and below
respond together to them:    

Matthew points out that far too many students arrive in high
school academically underprepared, and we share this concern. Adding qualified
college counselors to school staff should not be instead of more rigorous – or relevant – education in earlier
grades. We believe that schools – from kindergarten to 12th grade –
need to connect what students are doing in the classroom to the world outside their
walls, in rigorous and meaningful ways, helping students to engage in that
world and envision their own future
in it.

But in a society where education beyond high school is
becoming a necessity for social mobility, the public education system has a
responsibility to provide for its high school students what no private high
school would ever be without: a knowledgeable post-secondary counselor with a
small enough caseload to work with individual students. For first-generation-to
college students, it is even more crucial for schools to provide this resource,
as they are less likely than middle and upper income students to be able to
access this help at home.  By itself, academic
preparation for college is not enough: research shows that even the most
academically prepared are just as likely to not
enroll in college (or enroll in a college far below what they were qualified
for) as they are to enroll in a very selective college. See

http://www.diversityweb.org/research_and_trends/research_evaluation_impact/student_learning_outcomes/documents/FromHighSchooltotheFuturePotholestoCollege.pdf

MG raises a question about actual assignments in college.
The Bridges’ research showed tremendous variability across assignments in
college depending, in part, on the professor, but in larger part on the level
of competitiveness of the college. Looking at course syllabi and assignments
calls into question what “college ready” really means. Several graduates of
Bridges found themselves unengaged in coursework that focused on memorization
as opposed to critical thinking and classes that left little room for student
discussion and analysis.  We believe that,
though high schools need to better prepare students for higher education,
colleges too must make changes: they need to place more value on the pedagogical
practices of professors and support to first-generation college students more
generally.

In regards to MG’s request for cost-neutral recommendations:
though it is almost impossible to find reforms that are completely “cost-neutral”,
we do have recommendations that are cost-effective.
We believe that two of the most powerful resources for improving the
college-going culture of a school are things they already have: teachers and students. In order to make most of these resources, however,
schools have to commit time and energy to developing them. Teachers (who
interact with students on a day-to-day basis, and thus often have more
influence on their post-secondary thinking than counselors do) need to fully
understand issues related to college access for first-generation college-bound
students; they also need structured time during the school day to engage in
post-secondary exploration, planning and discussion with their students.  As for students, we have found that investing
time in training students to be Youth Leaders with their peers around issues of
college access is a highly effective way of building a school’s college-going
culture. Youth are able to communicate with their peers in ways adults cannot
and, when well trained, can support them through the many details of the
search, application, financial aid and transition process (see Voices in Urban
Education article by Chajet in the “Further Reading” box on this page). It is
important to note that we offer both of these recommendations not only because
they are cost-effective, but because we believe they are best practices. The
organization that we have founded to do this work advocates both of these
strategies, among others – see CARA’s Developing
an Effective College Access Program (pdf).

Andy rightfully raises the question: Is college really the
right destination for every high school graduate? Because of space constraints,
our Usable Knowledge summary did not explore this issue as deeply as we would
have liked. We absolutely agree that advocating one vision of college for all
students does not make sense. All of our work with adults in high schools
begins by exploring with them the need to ask their students “why college?” in
open-ended ways that don’t assume a single answer. We also work with adults to
widen their definition of what “college” is: for example, a student could study
for an Associates degree in culinary arts and be attending “college.” However,
because most teachers in high schools themselves studied for Bachelors degrees
(and beyond), they do not necessarily know as much about this wider range of
“college” options. In the past few years, we ourselves have moved towards the
term “post-secondary education” in our work, which encompasses a wider range of
options after high school.

That said, as noted above, we believe that in the current
economy, helping young people understand their post-secondary options – and
whether and how to access them – is part of providing educational equity in the
21st century. As we reference above, research repeatedly shows that among
low-income, first-generation college students, even the most academically
qualified are as likely to NOT go on to college as they are to access the kind
of selective post-secondary option that they are prepared for. What we hope and
advocate for is that ALL students receive the same kind of personalized and
thoughtful attention to, and information about, their choices in life beyond
high school as those in families where both parents attended college
themselves, and can help their children with this process. For more reading on
this, we reference you to the two articles by Janice (Bloom) in the “Further
Reading” box on this page.