The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation will partner with eight elite
universities in an effort to increase the number of low-income
community college students who transfer to top-ranked schools, the
foundation announced Monday.
Though UCLA is not part of the $27 million initiative, both UC
Berkeley and USC are to participate.
The initiative aims to increase the opportunities for
academically qualified low- and moderate-income students to
transfer to top-tier schools through efforts including financial
aid opportunities and help with the transfer application
process.
The foundation, which will contribute $6.78 million, invited the
127 most selective universities in the nation to apply for up to a
$1 million grant to participate in the program. Each school will
also contribute some of its own money. Of the 48 schools that
applied, which included UCLA, the foundation selected a variety
that best met its criteria.
“We wanted a mix of schools that were public and private,
rural and urban, nationwide,” said Pete Mackey, a spokesman
for the foundation. Only eight universities were selected because
“we only have so much money,” he said.
UCLA was among the 48 institutions that applied, said Alfred
Herrera, director of the Center for Community College Partnerships,
who wrote the grant proposal. He said UCLA already has several
programs to help community college students transfer to the
university and that the proposal was essentially an extension of
the efforts already underway.
The university is currently partnered with nine local
institutions through the UCLA/Community College Academic
Consortium, which is designed to facilitate the transfer of
students from community colleges to UCLA.
UCLA, which admitted 4,688 community college transfer students
in fall 2005, currently has the highest number of community college
transfer students of any UC campus.
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation started the initiative because
low-income students make up only 10 percent of the student
population of the most selective universities and only 7 percent of
low-income students graduate from college by age 26, according to
the foundation’s statistics. Since universities tend to
direct their recruitment efforts toward high school students, the
initiative’s organizers aim to give qualified community
college students the same opportunities.
Joshua Wyner, vice president of programs for the foundation,
said one criterion of the program is that the university provide
“equivalent financial aid” for community college
transfer students as it does for incoming high school students.
“We don’t want this initiative to fail because the
schools provide less money to the kids,” he said.
The programs at the eight schools, in partnerships with more
than 50 community colleges, expect to enroll an additional 1,100
community college transfer students over the next four years.
Berkeley expects to enroll 480 new transfer students during that
period. USC plans to partner with Los Angeles Trade Tech College
and East Los Angeles College to enroll 75 new transfer
students.
The remaining six schools participating in this initiative are
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of
Michigan, Cornell University, Amherst College, Bucknell University
and Mount Holyoke College.