The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday issued a report highlighting public and private colleges and universities that have been successful at helping enroll low-income students and getting them through school and graduated.
Four Georgia institutions were highlighted in the report:
1. Agnes Scott College - the private women’s liberal arts college in Decatur was listed as having 45 percent of its enrollment being eligible for Pell grants for low-income students. The school has been successful in helping these students graduate. About 71 percent of the school’s Pell recipients graduated in six years, compared to 72 percent of non-Pell recipients.
2. Georgia State University - The large urban institution has become a national model for succeeding with low-income and minority students. U.S. Secretary of Education John King visited Georgia State last week to learn more about the intensive advising and student tracking that has helped the school improve its retention and graduation rates for those students, and the Obama administration has given the school a $9 million grant to share its strategies nationally. Thursday's report emphasized Georgia State's partnership with 10 other institutions on these efforts.
3. Morehouse College - Slightly more than half the students at the country's only all-male college for black men are Pell recipients according to the report. The school is one of a group of historically black colleges that are working to improve its college completion rates. Morehouse's graduation rate is about 54 percent, which over the national average of 43 percent, according to the federal College Scorecard of data.
4. Spelman College - Like Morehouse, the report features Spelman — with 52 percent of its enrollment receiving Pell — as one of a group of HBCUs that is successfully graduating its Pell recipients. The women's college is also the recipient of a First in the World grant, like Georgia State. With its $2.7 million grant, Spelman is incorporate new teaching and learning strategies into its curriculum and training faculty and peer tutors on "metacognitive learning." The goal is to help students thoroughly engage with the material they are learning.
“While it’s true that college remains the greatest driver of socioeconomic mobility in America, it’s also true that if we don’t find ways to keep a college degree within reach for middle- and lower-middle class families, our institutions of higher education could end up having the opposite effect — they could become a barrier, not a bridge, to greater prosperity,” said King, in a statement announcing the findings.
Thursday’s report also called for colleges with significant gaps in completion rates for its Pell and non-Pell recipients to work harder at narrowing the gap.
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