Elite Colleges’ ‘Blind Spot’: Low-Income and High-Achieving Community College Students
“Community college has long been recognized as a cost-efficient ramp into a bachelor’s degree program. Yet many of the most prepared community college students don’t make it beyond their two-year institution. And shots are even slimmer for those looking to transfer to a four-year school with high graduation rates. Each year more than 50,000 high-achieving and low- to moderate-income community college students—those with at least a 3.0 GPA—don’t transfer to a four-year school, according to research from the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. Of those students, around 15,000 have a 3.7 GPA or higher, ‘the equivalent benchmark for ‘high performance’ predominantly found in the high school student college match literature,’ the report reads.”