Campus groups join forces to expand college access

Two of the University’s foremost advocates of expanding access to higher education have agreed to a collaborative relationship.

The partnership between student government’s accessible education task force and the Carolina Advising Corps will extend at least through March.

“The task force and the Carolina Advising Corps’ missions align perfectly,” said Jennie Cox Bell, the interim program coordinator of the advising corps, a program that places recent UNC graduates as college advisers in underprivileged N.C. high schools.

After researching about 100 of North Carolina’s most disadvantaged high schools, the arrangement became essential to achieving the groups’ mutual goal of expanding access to higher education, said Michael Hutson, task force chairman.

“We didn’t realize how much more effective things would be by working with the CAC,” Hutson said.

Student government’s research began toward the end of the 2007-08 academic year when Steve Farmer, director of admissions, provided a list of about 100 underprivileged N.C. high schools.

At least 50 percent of the student bodies at those schools received reduced price lunches.

Hutson said that after obtaining that “standard of where to start,” he spent the summer researching both graduation rates and the rates at which students applied to and enrolled in UNC-system schools.

“What we found was that drop-out rates would generally average anywhere from 15 percent to 55 percent, which was a very disturbing number,” Hutson said. “There were certain schools where they sent nobody to Carolina. There was one school where only nine students graduated and nobody even applied to Carolina.”

Hutson said that operations will focus on establishing or enhancing SAT preparation programs alongside the Carolina Advising Corps.

 “One of the main factors we found in the students being denied admission was such low average SAT scores,” he said. “The average SAT score in this group was in the low to mid-800s on a 1600-point scale.”

Bell and Hutson’s respective initiatives have each been buoyed by four-fold growth in participation within the past year.

“That has allowed us to take on more work just with the pure manpower abilities we have now,” Hutson said.

With additional resources, Hutson said he hopes to send more volunteers to statewide events that educate students about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and the college application process.

Such programs are crucial for prospective, first-generation college students who are often naïve to the application procedure, Bell said.

“What’s happening in North Carolina is not acceptable,” Hutson said. “That’s what we’re out to change.”



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.