Study says lack of counseling causes high-achieving, low-income students to forgo college

Academe, May/Jun 1999

THIS SPRING, HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS all over the United States reviewed acceptance letters from the colleges and universities of their choice and decided where to enroll in the fall. Not included in that group were about twenty-one thousand seniors whose academic achievement placed them in the top 20 percent of the nation. They will not enroll in college after high school because they are from poor families.

Ironically, according to a study by sociologists at Johns Hopkins University, the failure of these students to go to college often has little to do with their families' financial wherewithal. Instead, it happens because the students never receive practical advice about applying to college from their high school guidance counselors or other adults.

Will Jordan and Stephen Plank, researchers at JHU's Center for Social Organization of Schools, conducted the study based on U.S. Department of Education survey data and interviews with guidance counselors at large urban schools. Jordan and Plank identify several reasons why students from low- to moderate-income families could easily get into college yet never enroll. Some just want to work after high school, some enter the military, and some simply do not like school.

But a predominant reason for their failure to enroll, Jordan and Plank say, is that they did not plan for college well. Many did not start to look into college until the second semester of their senior year, and a large number did not know about the availability of financial aid and scholarships; they simply assumed they could not afford to attend college.

Jordan and Plank report a direct correlation between early (at least by tenth grade) and consistent talks about college between adults and students and college entrance rates, regardless of students' socioeconomic backgrounds. "Unfortunately, in large, urban, at-risk schools," Jordan says, "the burden to initiate these kinds of talks usually rests on the student." It is important, he argues, "to have someone say early on to the student things like, `Don't take that basket-weaving course; you need to take this biology course.' Or, `This college looks interesting. Why don't you go visit it?' That kind of simple, practical advice can make a difference for the rest of the student's life."