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"High school seniors are set to participate in College Application Day. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education says the event Tuesday tries to increase the number of first-generation and low-income students pursuing a college degree or other post-secondary credentials."

"Bloomberg Philanthropies is leading a coalition of organizations that aims to raise the number of top-performing students from lower-income families who attend colleges with six-year graduation rates of at least 70%."

"Some Washington, D.C., children are denied participation in the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives students from low-income families scholarships to attend private schools, despite a law that gives students with siblings in the program preference."

"Young people from low-income families, and first-generation college students, are not necessarily the same as minority students. But like minority students, they are less prevalent on campuses than their wealthier counterparts from well-educated families and they are rare at the nation's most elite universities, such as the University of Michigan."

"On Tuesday, a handful of institutions will announce an ambitious new effort on this front. Led by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the coalition is setting a specific goal for which it can be held accountable. Today, only about one in three top-performing students from the bottom half of the income distribution attends a college with a high six-year graduation rate (at least 70 percent). Within five years, the Bloomberg coalition wants to raise that to one in every two students."

"In 1947, the Truman Commission on Higher Education recognized this vital role and prompted the federal government to begin making investments in public colleges to make postsecondary education more accessible and affordable to all students. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a number of the commission's recommendations were adopted; the additional investment paid off, resulting in significant increases in the share of high school graduates going to college."

"Cuts to state funding for higher education in Louisiana rank among the highest in the country since the 2008 recession, according to a revelatory new report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning public research and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C."

"By contrast, tuition in the United States at both public and private colleges has risen steeply over the past 10 years. Even worse, private for-profit colleges have proliferated around the country, with enrollment growing by 225 percent from 1998 to 2008. These colleges prey on low-income students, leaving many deep in debt, without a degree, and in low-paying jobs that bear little resemblance to the descriptions in for-profit college's recruitment pitches and late night television ads."

"South Dakota has been faced with the challenge of helping Native American and lowincome students succeed in college, but now with $3.6 million in federal funds, six South Dakota universities and a tribal college plan to generate momentum for these students through the South Dakota Jump Start Program."

"You can't learn what you can't see. That's the basic principle behind 'Vision to Learn,' a new campaign in Delaware to give low-income students free eye exams and glasses."

"Big changes are on the way for the Federal Direct PLUS Loan Program (Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students): The U.S. Department of Education is loosening rules for eligibility in a move targeted at making it easier for parents and students to pay for a college education. On Wednesday the department announced and published the final regulations. Among the core adjustments are revised borrower eligibility; a streamlined application for a PLUS Loan, particularly for those with "adverse credit history"; and an updated definition of "adverse credit history," which had not been adjusted since 1994."

"f you want to address income inequality, fix higher education. That seems to be the current thinking in Washington, where President Obama has urged college administrators to better serve low-income students. Some colleges have been following that guidance. The University of Chicago has been praised for its new campaign to recruit low-income students a strategy that reduces the financial paperwork in the admissions process and guarantees low- and middle-income students summer employment while no longer expecting them to work during the academic year."