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"Low-income college students have challenges beyond tuition, room and board. They can have trouble paying for food. A group called First Generation Low Income Partnership, or FLIP, is trying to change that."

"Socioeconomic integration is a more significant factor in the success of low-income students than all the academic efforts and school resources combined. Low-income students perform better and can close the achievement gap with their more affluent peers when they attend low-poverty schools."

"But receiving a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, while a transformative experience for the nation's poorest students, is only the first hurdle. Once on campus, students report feelings of loneliness, alienation, and plummeting self-confidence. Having grant money for tuition and fees and holding down jobs, too, as virtually all of them do, doesn't translate to having the pocket money to keep up with free-spending peers. And some disadvantaged students feel they don't have a right to complain to peers or administrators about anything at all; they don't want to be perceived as ungrateful."

"Catharine Hill, who became president of Vassar in 2006, has a background in economics focused on college accessibility. One of the biggest changes she made was to dedicate more funding to need-based financial aid. In 2007, she also moved the school back to a need-blind admissions process, meaning that a students' financial background is not a factor in whether they are admitted. The school worked with Questbridge, a nonprofit organization that connects motivated low-income students to selective colleges."

"Amidst our platitudes and promises of equity and justice, there are some pretty clear-cut reasons why low-income students are dropping out, failing out, or never even starting college. And although there is no silver bullet, it becomes painfully hard to throw our hands up in the air in the face of so many simple and solvable barriers."

"In the latest of a series of studies, a research organization has found that many students in middle-class schools in Michigan fail to meet or exceed proficiency standards. The study is titled 'Not as Good as You Think: Why Michigan Parents Should Be Concerned about Their Local Schools,' and is authored by Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute. He says middle-class students often fare no better than their counterparts in low-income, urban public schools."

"Atlanta city officials say they're planning to offer a federally-supported program to provide meals to low-income children during summer break from school."

"Food pantries, where students in need can stock up on groceries and basic supplies, started cropping up on campuses in large numbers after the recession began in 2007. More than 200 U.S. colleges, mostly public institutions, now operate pantries, and more are on the way, even as the economy rebounds."

"Vassar College is the inaugural recipient of an annual $1-million award given to the college that most successfully admits and graduates low-income students, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announced Tuesday."

"Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval's proposal to help lower-income students afford private schools passed the Nevada Senate in party-line vote on Tuesday and is now headed to his desk for final approval. Senators approved AB165, which proponents say will help students leave lower-achieving schools and attend one of the estimated 200 private schools in the state that might be financially out of reach."

"Many aspects of the economic picture have improved since the height of the recession in late 2008. Yet the number of children living in families categorized as poor or near-poor remains stubbornly high, recently released figures from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University show. "