The Penn Foster Blog

Only 10.9 percent of low-income students who are first in their family to attend college achieve a Bachelor's Degree within six years, according to Pell Institute data.1 This contrasts starkly with 24.1 percent for non-first-generation low-income students and 54 percent for students who are neither first-generation nor low-income. First-generation students face additional obstacles for various reasons, including absence of role models and social support, insufficient academic preparation, lack of specialized academic support, greater financial burdens than other students, and language barriers. Career colleges can help alleviate some of these factors by adopting measures to assist first-generation students.

Starbucks made headlines in early June when the coffee giant announced plans to offer employees full tuition to Arizona State University's online program. The company's current college achievement program already offered two years of undergraduate tuition at ASU, and now baristas can earn a free bachelor's degree.

Career colleges are getting ready for Gainful Employment. As institutional and program effectiveness specialist Amanda Opperman describes, schools will soon be required to submit an avalanche of student data for the years 2008 to 2015.1 But this is just preliminary to the larger task of achieving compliance with minimum requirements for student loan repayment rates and debt-to-income ratios. Facing this challenge will require implementing effective strategies to ensure that institutional performance is in compliance with Gainful Employment standards.

In 2014, our nation's high school graduation rate topped 80 percent for the first time in U.S. history.1 Hispanic/Latino students were the subgroups with the greatest improvements in graduation rates. Between 2006 and 2012, the graduation rates of Latino students grew 15 percentage points. This fast-growing student population also increased 4.2 percentage points from 2011 to 2013 in Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR) reporting, according to "Building a Nation, Executive Brief: Overview of 2012-13 High School Graduation Rates."

Through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world. In 2013, 54,148 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone and approximately 500,000 youth are brought to detention centers in a given year.1  The consequences of this dynamic includes the phenomenon of "peer delinquency training," and results in greater levels of substance abuse, school difficulties, violence, and adjustment difficulties to adulthood.2 These dynamics are also a primary cause of the so called "dropout-to-prison pipeline" issue which regrettably proves the high correlation between high school drop rates and youth challenges with the law. This situation is pervasive and depreciates the lives of millions of young Americans, and also ends up costing taxpayers billions of dollars to keep dropouts and disadvantaged populations in prison.

National high school graduation rates are on the rise, according to the 2015 report on Building a Grad Nation, jointly issued by the Alliance for Excellent Education, America's Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.1 After dropping below 75 percent in 2006, the average graduation rate has climbed each year, reaching 80 percent in 2012 and 81.4 percent in 2013. If graduation levels continue to rise at this rate, the GradNation coalition expects it can achieve its goal of a 90 percent on-time high school graduation rate by 2020.

Joining the likes of Starbucks and McDonald's, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced that it is going to offer free college tuition to employees at Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram and Fiat dealerships across the country. Over 118,000 employees can take classes through Strayer University, a private, for-profit college. Chrysler employees can take their classes online or attend classes at one of Strayer's brick-and-mortar campus locations. Employees at dealerships in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee can already enroll in this new program, and the program will continue to roll out in phases until all of the US dealerships are included.

Not all students learn the same way, but many students - whether traditional or nontraditional, who come from diverse backgrounds - have one thing in common: they have no idea what to do after high school.

Our nation continues to combat the dropout crisis by increasing the high school graduation rate (from 80 percent in 2012 to 81.4 percent in 2013). It's progress for education, but what about the achievement gap?1 The National Center for Education Statistics defines the achievement gap as the result of when "one group of students outperforms another group and the difference in average scores for the two groups is statistically significant."2 In other words, the achievement gap is a disparity of educational performance measures among groups of students who differ by race and ethnicity, gender or socioeconomic status.

Youth who come from low-income families or challenging environments have plenty to deal with, and yet this group of students still must endure the preconceived notions and low expectations sometimes perpetuated by educators, learning institutions, communities and society as a whole. These young people are up against a lot, and the odds aren't in their favor.