Two programs show promising successes with low-income community college students. The first would seem to build social and cultural capital:
Benefits of membership in the honor society include various activities to encourage student engagement, the study said. Those include leadership opportunities, soft-skills professional development and transfer readiness.
The group introduces students to “friends who are going places,” Tincher-Ladner said.
The second provides generous financial aid and ongoing supports to students that, in the end, pay off:
However, the Dell Scholars program appears to be a fiscally sound investment, the study found. Its authors conducted a fairly simple cost-benefit analysis, and found that the financial benefits — both in the enhanced earnings of recipients and their tax payments — tops the program’s costs after 12 years of postcollege earnings.
In other words, leveling social and economic playing fields –beyond academic remediation — seems to work.
via Programs have success helping low-income students graduate.
Education and Class 